[HN Gopher] uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari
___________________________________________________________________
uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari
Author : Jiahang
Score : 914 points
Date : 2025-08-05 09:01 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apps.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apps.apple.com)
| JoeriBe wrote:
| This app is currently not available in your country or region.
| yapyap wrote:
| For me as well
| donohoe wrote:
| ... and you are in what country/region?
| whstl wrote:
| Germany/Europe, not available for me.
| mrcarrot wrote:
| Also not available in Austria
| mobilio wrote:
| Bulgaria/Europe - also not available
| owenmcfadzen wrote:
| For me as well
| kumekay wrote:
| Not available in Czechia/EU
| comrade1234 wrote:
| I'm in CH and it's available to me but I can never remember
| if I'm set to the Swiss store or the USA store...
|
| Ok, just looked and I think I'm on the Swiss store. Well, at
| least you guys get the option of adding non-apple app stores
| while we do not.
| Squarex wrote:
| Can confirm. I hope that they enable it before the Testflight
| build expires.
| Philpax wrote:
| Sweden/Europe, same
| morphle wrote:
| Not available in the Netherlands/Europe.
| chronogamous wrote:
| Had no problem finding and downloading it from the AppStore;
| then again, it's been ten hours since you posted, so maybe it
| has only just popped up in the last couple of hours for
| people in the Netherlands.
| morphle wrote:
| Yep, indeed. It now downloads in the Apps store for The
| Netherlands
| eliseumds wrote:
| Same, not available in Spain.
| yashasolutions wrote:
| The beauty of Apple. As if there's any actual technical
| limitation in distributing a binary over the internet.
| AnonHP wrote:
| The developer chooses which countries to make their
| app/extension available. Apple doesn't make the decision.
| bigyabai wrote:
| That's not a feature I'm required to use on Android, MacOS,
| Windows or Linux. If it's not Apple's decision to enforce
| it then I wonder who would degrade the experience like
| that?
| wazoox wrote:
| Neither in France.
| cocoto wrote:
| Seems to be available now but it was not some hours before.
| messe wrote:
| Unavailable here in Denmark too.
| messe wrote:
| Too late to edit the above, but it seems to be available now.
| smarx007 wrote:
| From @gorhill himself: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-
| home/issues/358#issueco...
|
| Let's wait a bit
| lapcat wrote:
| App Store developers have to declare whether or not they're a
| "trader" in the EU, so that might be the issue.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=einwn76m
| smarx007 wrote:
| I think you were spot on. Should be fixed now.
| arational wrote:
| You can use the Testflight version.
| uallo wrote:
| Non-Chinese version: https://apps.apple.com/app/ublock-origin-
| lite/id6745342698
| mouselett wrote:
| Thank you for the link. Can some moderator please update the
| link? Thanks in advance.
| bartvk wrote:
| Update the link to what?
| mouselett wrote:
| I meant to the one in the reply, but it looks like someone
| already did.
| Cadwhisker wrote:
| I got the Australian one by replacing `cn` with `au` in the
| link.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/au/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
| HelloUsername wrote:
| You can share it simply as
| https://apps.apple.com/app/id6745342698, no region required
| tomhow wrote:
| Updated, thanks!
| kovariantenkak wrote:
| From the permissions in Safari:
|
| > Web Page Contents and Browsing History - Can read and alter
| sensitive information on web pages, including passwords, phone
| numbers and credit cards, and see your browsing history on the
| current tab's web page when you use the extension.
|
| What does it mean for me to use the extension? Am I using it if
| it is installed?
| donohoe wrote:
| Installation is the first step, then you must enable it.
|
| If you go to safari settings and enable it there, then you are
| using it.
| kovariantenkak wrote:
| And then am I using it if I'm loading the extension by
| interacting with it? Because simply enabling it will not give
| it access to the webpage.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| loading a page will
| digikazi wrote:
| Bizarrely when I do that it tells me "uBO Lite is not
| supported by this version of Safari".
|
| On an iPhone 13 with the latest version of iOS.
|
| I'm very new to the Apple ecosystem so it could well be that
| it's meant to work on a laptop/desktop rather than the mobile
| version.
|
| I could of course be wrong: does anybody know better? Or is
| it a case of me being frazzled after work?
|
| EDIT: some users have suggested upgrading to iOS 18.6 solves
| this problem. Doing it as we speak!
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| Reading and altering content on web pages is the purpose of the
| extension.
| kovariantenkak wrote:
| That does not answer the question in any way. Especially,
| since it claims to use zero CPU when active and because iOS
| ad blocking works differently.
| gildas wrote:
| The warning message you mentioned simply means that the
| extension can inject "content scripts" into the web pages
| you visit. This feature is necessary, for example, to
| remove ads that cannot be blocked via HTTP.
| gorhill wrote:
| > it claims to use zero CPU
|
| There is no claim of "zero CPU". The claim is that the
| service worker wakes up only when necessary -- it is
| designed to be suspended by default from the ground up.
|
| In Optimal and Complete modes, the content scripts will of
| course execute, without the service worker being
| unsuspended if no filtering occurs, but perform only the
| necessary work and bail out ASAP if not needed.
|
| In Basic or "No filtering" modes, no content scripts are
| injected.
|
| ---
|
| Edit: Sorry, I do say "uBOL itself does not consume
| CPU/memory resources while content blocking is ongoing".
| When I say "itself" I am referring to the service worker as
| seen in Chromium's Task Manager. The service worker isn't
| required for examples when navigating to `example.com` or
| here at `news.ycombinator.com`. All top content blockers I
| have looked at do require their service worker to execute,
| even for merely just switching between tabs. Some even use
| tricks to prevent their service worker to be suspended at
| all.
| frou_dh wrote:
| I've been puzzled reading previous discussions about Safari where
| people acted as if it doesn't have good ad-blocking, just because
| the brand name extension they're familiar with wasn't available.
| There has been very good ad-blocking available on Safari for a
| long time (both macOS and iOS) using for example AdGuard.
| Squarex wrote:
| For privacy aware people it can be important that an open
| source and well trusted extension is available.
| broeng wrote:
| It's been possible for about a decade to use Firefox Focus as
| a Content Blocker for Safari. I assume it's open source,
| "well trusted" is of course subjective.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Firefox Focus doesn't exist on Mac, though.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I thought the whole point of iOS and macOS content blockers
| is that it does not have to be trusted, since there is never
| any data flowing out, only a list of blocked IP addresses
| that the operating system refers to (like a windows hosts
| (file).
| skydhash wrote:
| Adblocking as links bloking can be sufficient, but sometimes
| you need to bring the big guns and alter the page content
| itself. Safari has even "Hide distracting elements" now, which
| can not be an extension. That cements the idea that most uBlock
| Origin features should be part of the browser to make it a
| wonderful user agent.
| broeng wrote:
| It's been possible to use Content Blockers for Safari for a
| long time, which alters the page content. Firefox Focus came
| out about a decade ago, and can be used as one.
| shawnz wrote:
| Ad blockers on Safari effectively have the same weaknesses as
| ad blockers on Chrome now have since the deprecation of the
| blocking webRequest API (which Safari never supported).
|
| See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-
| works-b... for some examples of things you can't do without
| those APIs.
| frou_dh wrote:
| As I understand it, AdGuard uses (in addition to a browser
| extension) a system-level local network proxy so can do
| anything to requests and responses?
|
| Confusingly, there are 3 offerings: "AdGuard for Mac",
| "AdGuard for iOS" and "AdGuard for Safari" and I think it's
| the first 2 that are the good stuff, even for Safari.
| lapcat wrote:
| > the blocking webRequest API (which Safari never supported)
|
| This is inaccurate. Safari (Mac) supported it until 2019, and
| indeed there was a version of uBlock Origin for Safari back
| then.
| shawnz wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for the correction.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I don't think uBlock Origin ever supported Safari?
| lapcat wrote:
| https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158
| saagarjha wrote:
| Ah, unofficial fork
| lapcat wrote:
| It was a fork. I'm not sure what you mean exactly by
| "unofficial". Gorhill said at the time that he didn't
| have time to maintain a Safari version, but he was aware
| of the fork, which mostly shared code with upstream, and
| seemingly endorsed the fork.
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/About-Safari-and-
| Cana...
| mary-ext wrote:
| that said, gorhill has made a decent effort on making most
| uBlock/Adguard filter rules work within dNR.
|
| the only problem is that you just don't have any choice for
| custom filters, it relies on prebaked resources.
| ezfe wrote:
| Which is not a Safari restriction. Applications are allowed
| to revise those resources, they are not hardcoded into the
| bundle.
| Bewelge wrote:
| My experience has been that installing AdGuard on my iPhone
| made no noticeable difference. To be fair, I barely browse on
| my phone. Basically only news sites and Reddit/HN. But apart
| from HN I see ads on all of those pages.
|
| So I am just a puzzled by your point of view :) May I ask which
| App you are using? I would love to be proven wrong and have an
| ad-free browsing experience in the future.
| frou_dh wrote:
| Not sure what to troubleshoot with AdGuard, but from
| consulting mine that's working well, I'd ensure that both
| "Safari protection" and "Advanced protection" are enabled in
| its app, and that all of its Safari extensions in the system
| Settings app are enabled (and the main one is set to "All
| Websites: Allow").
| Bewelge wrote:
| Ah thanks! I only have Safari protection enabled, the
| advanced one requires me to pay (though I don't remember
| that from when I installed it a couple of months ago).
|
| Saw someone else in this thread mention the Orion browser -
| I will give that a try for now. If I'm not satisfied I'll
| try paying for AdGuard. Thanks for the reply though!
| charcircuit wrote:
| The same thing happened when Chrome dropped mv2 support and a
| brand name ad blocking extention never upgraded beyond mv2.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| There's a reason why this is uBlock Origin _Lite_ and not
| uBlock Origin. Still works, but can 't do the same thing as the
| extension for Firefox (desktop), for example.
| TheSilva wrote:
| I have been using the version published in Testflight for quite a
| while now and I must say I haven't seen much difference from my
| previous setup (Firefox Focus configured as the ad blocking
| provider in Safari settings)
|
| But, given their record on providing excellent software and
| features, I am so happy to switch to them and to see what they
| are capable of in the future!
| fhd2 wrote:
| Content blockers on iOS are severely limited compared to what's
| possible with powerful extension mechanisms (Firefox, Chrome
| before Manifest V3) or built-in ad blockers (Brave). So there's
| not really differentiation on a technical level, which is where
| uBlock Origin was always strong. On these other platforms,
| there was a lot of innovation going on when I was in the space
| (2020), especially against sites that actively try to
| circumvent ad blockers. On iOS, there's not much that can be
| done. At least unless I missed some major developments.
|
| As for the lists of resources to block and DOM elements to hide
| - which is by and large all an iOS ad blocker is - most just
| use the popular ones like EasyList with a few additions. uBlock
| Origin has a good track record of maintaining additional
| filters, so I think there's reason to believe it'll work better
| than most.
|
| But all in all, for these two reasons, you probably won't
| notice much of a difference between different ad blockers on
| iOS.
| tux wrote:
| Requires iOS 18.0+ sadly older iOS not supported :-(
| comrade1234 wrote:
| iOS 18.5 safari can't use it. I swear I was successfully using
| the beta. Guess I'll try upgrading to iOS 18.6.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Ok, updated and can be activated on iOS 18.6 safari.
| tomalpha wrote:
| I just searched within the (edit: iOS App Store) App Store app
| for ublock origin lite "ublock origin
| lite"
|
| For the unquoted search, there are twelve different apps/items
| returned above it - you really have to scroll down to find it at
| number 13.
|
| Even for the quoted search, it's returned in fourth place.
|
| More interestingly the second time I searched with quoted it's in
| third place, and the third time of searching the sponsored items
| at the top is getting even more random.
| Meekro wrote:
| Working fine for me-- when I search under Mac Apps for "ublock
| origin lite" (no quotes), it appears in 1st place.
| tomalpha wrote:
| Sorry, I should have been clearer. I too get the same for Mac
| apps, but for iOS apps still see the same competitor results
| returned first. For me, that's the same whether I use the App
| Store from my phone, or laptop.
| mort96 wrote:
| For me, searching for "uBlock origin lite" (without the
| quotes) puts it in 3rd place; below AdBlock Pro and an ad for
| trip(dot)com.
|
| When I search "uBlock origin" it doesn't seem to show up at
| all.
| whstl wrote:
| Apple is really bad at search, and on purpose. Welp, money
| before quality!
| cedws wrote:
| Nah I think they're just bad at search, macOS Spotlight
| search has to be the most slow janky search I have ever used.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| You haven't used windows search recently I take it.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Eh, as a person then uses both occasionally... I feel
| like they're pretty on-par?
|
| Is the osx search performing so much better on your end?
| If so, in results or speed? Because for me, both osx and
| windows searches leave me annoyed anytime I try to use
| them, it's so bad that I usually prefer to use CLI tools
| on both platforms ...
|
| Or were you just saying it cuz it's funny?
| DrewADesign wrote:
| I'm sure there's some indexing thing I could take care
| of, but windows edges out spotlight for me for both
| ineffectiveness and slowness on every machine I use. For
| me, windows used to be far better than spotlight. It's
| strange to me how much better the command line tools do
| essentially the same job, and that, anecdotally, the GUI
| ones seem to be getting worse?
| prmoustache wrote:
| On the azure win11 desktop I am using professionally
| (only windows I use) a large fraction of the time you
| can't even search anything because the windows menu just
| freeze.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Same for me, But OSX seems to have a similar issue at
| least on my MacBook Pro M1.
|
| I occasionally get the multicolor disk spinner which
| locks all UI interactions for a few seconds (10-30s)
| until it unfreezes and works as before again...
|
| Haven't been able to figure out the exact cause for it,
| feels very random.
| asimpletune wrote:
| I think it got slow on M1 when AI features came out. I
| recently disabled them in and trying that out.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Don't do that! You'll be left behind by society--
| rendered penniless and fatally inconvenienced by the lack
| of tooling to exponentially improve your productivity!
| danaris wrote:
| I know that occasionally, the Spotlight index can get
| corrupted, and you have to manually delete it and let it
| regenerate. If you search for that with your current OS
| version, you should be able to find some decent
| instructions for it.
|
| (My guess is that the Windows issue is something similar?
| but I have no experience with it, so don't know if it can
| be fixed in a similar way)
| DrewADesign wrote:
| While it's clearly not everybody, in my and a number of
| other users' personal onedrives, search hasn't worked
| since May. Zero results for any search in any context. No
| response from MS other than essentially "yep! Sorry!
| Working on it! Promise! In the interim, try just
| remembering where everything is maybe! lol!"
| mathgeek wrote:
| Which I find really sad because at one point OSX had search
| quality that was really satisfying. That was maybe twenty
| years ago for me.
| tim333 wrote:
| My favourite was back in os7. I didn't really use the
| file system because you just started typing the name of
| the file and it came up instantly. I'm not sure why
| companies have to break simple stuff that works well.
| kergonath wrote:
| Spotlight was a revelation in Tiger. I don't know exactly
| when it degraded but it's a damn shame how annoying it's
| become.
| hylaride wrote:
| MacOS to me started to regress ~2012. I can't remember
| what specific release it was, but one major MacOS release
| around then no longer remembered my MacBook's external
| monitor layouts between work and home anymore and it was
| always "random".
|
| Spotlight, AirTunes/Airplay, iTunes, etc all also just
| slowly degraded. It's like Steve Jobs was personally
| doing all QA and it just stopped when he died. I remember
| iTunes genius being SO GOOD that it cost me a fortune in
| song purchases, but now that apple just gets my monthly
| music payment, discovering new music is hard again.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Mojave was a high watermark. 32 bit support still.
| Relatively polished.
| xp84 wrote:
| Yes. Spotlight search for the Application launcher use-
| case was close to the speed and quality of LaunchBar
| (which still works that way of course) when Apple first
| introduced the command-space shortcut, on vastly slower
| "oughts" computers. Today it's much slower and less
| consistent.
|
| However we know that they could easily do a simple search
| effectively because Apple's Launchpad has a perfect app
| search built in. If you give Launchpad a global shortcut
| you can press <shortcut>saf<return> and be assured it
| will instantly open safari every time. Of course,
| LaunchBar (no affiliation, but I've been using it for 22
| years) still beats that in every way.
| artursapek wrote:
| They definitely are bad at search. When I type "safar" into
| iOS settings, it says "no results for "safar"" while it
| looks for the fucking built-in browser's search page.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Weird. I get lots of relevant results with Safari at the
| top. Which somehow makes it a little worse: I'd naively
| think we should get identical results.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I can never find my emails on Mac. Even worse if they're
| organized in folders. I just want a universal search:
| contains text, sort by age, I don't care about other
| filters....
| e40 wrote:
| I don't even see uBO Lite in the iOS App Store. I scrolled
| pretty far, too.
| mort96 wrote:
| I just searched for uBlock. Top result is an ad for another ad
| blocker. Second result is an ad blocker called "Ublock", with
| "Origin" in its tags; a clear scam whose purpose is to leech
| off the reputation of uBlock Origin and trick people.
|
| Apple's App Store is chock full of scams like this. It's not
| _just_ bad search, it 's a failure to enforce any kind of anti
| scam policy (combined with seemingly intentionally terrible
| search).
| vehemenz wrote:
| The problem is that people like us use Homebrew (and tell our
| families to), so there's little incentive to complain loudly
| about this issue. Browser extensions and the occasional one-
| off app are the only reasons to go there.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Why do people think a browser extension is safe to use?
| vehemenz wrote:
| The point is that Safari's extension system requires
| using the App Store, not that it's inherently safer. In
| some ways, the "App" model that Safari uses could be more
| unsafe, regardless of Apple's code review.
|
| Nonetheless, a critical engagement of software "safety"
| would require another few thousand words, at least.
| bearl wrote:
| Security experts.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Why do people think a browser is safe to use? Why do
| people think any app is safe to use? Why do people think
| a website is safe to use? Why do people think an OS is
| safe to use? Why do people think a driver is safe to use?
| Why do people think a firmware is safe to use? Why do
| people think a hardware device is safe to use? Why do
| people think the chips inside are safe to use? Why do
| people think an ISP is safe to use?
|
| If you have a point to make about it being particularly
| unsafe or different from any other internet/software
| trust, make that point. Otherwise you know well enough
| that there isn't any other option but trust, and people
| generally trust stuff until given a good reason not to.
| mns wrote:
| But god forbid you have the word Android somewhere in your
| app, because they will then reject your update.
| filoleg wrote:
| > god forbid you have the word Android somewhere in your
| app
|
| I literally have an app installed on my iPhone called
| "Android TV" (a remote to control android smart TVs, which
| I used to have years ago), and it says "Connect to Android
| TV" in giant header typeface on the app homescreen.
|
| Searching for "Android" on app store brings up even more
| apps containing that word in the name and in the app,
| including third-party non-Google apps.
| mns wrote:
| We have an app for our platform and that app has a news
| section, we were rejected because we had news about
| Android devices. We are at this point providing a
| filtered news list where items with certain keywords are
| excluded on Apple devices. Maybe it's because of the app
| category.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I've always wondered why attorneys do not see these
| situations as easy money. Corporations really do control the
| courts...
| sneak wrote:
| Apple's contempt for its customers is palpable these days.
|
| It breaks my heart to see how far they've fallen.
| cwmoore wrote:
| I have not raised expectations since they deleted half of
| my music collection years ago. To this day they provide no
| way to export iMessage threads.
| recursive wrote:
| Some of us have been palpating it for decades.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Apple's App Store makes so much revenue (mainly through the
| slightly more legit scams like gacha games, but plenty
| through weekly subscriptions for outright scam apps too) that
| there are many incentives for that team to never clean this
| up.
|
| It's a huge driver of what Apple pushes as the future of the
| company: services. It has been this way for more than a
| decade now: "What the hell is this????Remember our talking
| about finding bad apps with low ratings? Remember our talk
| bout becoming the 'Nordstroms' of stores in quality of
| service?" - Phil Schiller in 2012
| (https://www.imore.com/hilarious-phil-schiller-email-
| reveals-...)
| ashurov wrote:
| doesn't seem to be available in the Dutch app-store.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| It is mind-boggling, how in this day and age search functions
| can still be soooo bad in so many places on the web and inside
| applications. At the very least a 100% substring match should
| be very visible in the result. If not at the top, then there
| should be sorting criteria, to make it appear at the top, so
| that one can sane-ify the search result, when it is not sane.
|
| A good example for bad search is the windows start menu. If you
| just logged in and the system is still loading (whatever it is
| doing all that long...) and you press the super key and then
| start typing, it might be too slow to find things _locally on
| your disk_, and might start searching online. When you have
| developed an automatism and just continue typing and then hit
| enter/return key, you will get some online shit result shown in
| Edge or some Microsoft store shit, instead of simply launching
| your already installed app. A critical race right there in the
| start menu. It's baffling.
|
| Recently, there was a reddit post about a KDE menu search thing
| just as silly. It would not prioritize the title/name of an
| app, but instead, after typing 3 or more characters, find a
| word in the description of a launcher/starter of other apps and
| show those first, even though the 3 chars or more are a perfect
| substring of the name of an app.
|
| People reinvent simple search and make silly searches over and
| over again. One of the main criteria is, that a substring match
| must lead to being high in the results, if not the top result.
| Shorter wins vs longer, because the match has higher percentage
| of match with the full title/name. Beginning of the string
| matched? Higher in results. All very basic things, that
| shouldn't be difficult to implement.
| immibis wrote:
| In Apple's case we can safely assume it's intentionally like
| that to make the most money.
| cons0le wrote:
| Its great for the app store if people mistakenly download
| the wrong app. They can increase the total downloads stats
| for more than one app that way. And it creates more
| "engagement' with the app store. They don't care that it's
| "forced" engagement
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Does Apple still allow shamefully antipattern
| subscriptions like $7/week?
|
| They are so complicit in garbage rebill apps, it's
| pathetic.
| imzadi wrote:
| RoboKiller recently went from like $9.99/mo to $7/week.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| It's not mind boggling at all. It's controlled by one entity
| that is not optimizing for good search, but rather its own
| financial gain.
| nemomarx wrote:
| What's the entity in question for KDE search?
| dizhn wrote:
| The search is pulling from a bunch of sources in a
| particular order and returning results as it finds them
| probably. I wouldn't expect it to be anything sinister.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Indeed, it's called Plasma Search, available in system
| settings. Providers can be enabled, disabled, and
| configured at will. I can't imagine it would be all that
| difficult to code your own and get it hooked up in there,
| if you were so inclined. Personally I just unchecked
| everything except "Applications" and I use it like a
| quick launcher. Works great for my purposes.
| dizhn wrote:
| I use it exactly like that too. It's too jarring to get
| anything else in the results for me and while I can't
| imagine why anyone would include any other source, to
| each their own.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| KDE search doesn't ignore your search terms like many
| search engines.
|
| But it also doesn't let you choose which version of emacs
| is the first result for "emacs" so it has a separate set
| of problems.
| const_cast wrote:
| KDE search is super good, if you're referring to krunner.
| It searches everything, bookmarks, open tabs, filenames,
| paths, and even file contents. And it's really fast.
|
| You have to turn the file indexer on or install it if you
| don't have it. Try `baloo status` or `baloo6 status`.
| Poke around in setting too so you can index what you need
| and not temp files.
| ygritte wrote:
| That's what you get for letting megacorps get away with
| monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior.
| Eggpants wrote:
| cool story bruh
| lhamil64 wrote:
| The search in Google Messages on Android is completely
| useless too. It seems like it only searches within the past
| few days or something, if I try searching for something from
| a while back it never finds it. And they removed the feature
| to quickly scroll back to a date in the past, so the only way
| to dig up old texts is to manually scroll back in a
| conversation and hope you find it. It's absolutely ridiculous
| that the search is so bad when it's an app by Google of all
| companies.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > The search in Google Messages on Android is completely
| useless too.
|
| It's literally all Google products. They've just simplified
| and contextualized and added other things over the years
| such that if you're not searching for something already
| above the fold then it won't show up.
|
| When I was using Gmail I had an email with important
| information that I needed about once a year. I knew the
| exact subject and who it was from but it would never show
| up in search. It was my only starred email so I could find
| it on demand.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| Part of the reason I pay for Shortwave is because its
| basic search is so much better than Gmail's. I don't even
| use the LLM except for more descriptive searches, which
| it is also quite good at.
| const_cast wrote:
| Thunderbird search is one of the best I've ever seen.
| Very granular options. Highly recommend.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I've managed to divest myself of most Google Apps. At
| this point I'm only using them for shared docs or
| calendars.
| Kaytaro wrote:
| That's funny because iMessage search works quite well if
| you can find it buried in the interface. I have a feeling
| Apple themselves forgot it exists and hasn't gotten around
| to 'modernizing' it with AI yet.
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| > I have a feeling Apple themselves forgot it exists and
| hasn't gotten around to 'modernizing' it with AI yet.
|
| tfw you're a big tech engineer/PM who does the right
| thing for your users but get blamed anyway
| isametry wrote:
| Even funnier is, it was obscenely bad for years, and then
| it made a sudden jump to "pretty darn good". My headcanon
| is that someone high-up at Apple tried to search for a
| message, noticed how broken it was, and then assigned an
| entire engineering department to work on nothing else
| than iMessage search for two weeks.
|
| This Reddit post suggests this happened in iOS 13 (so
| 2019): https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/d7wemx/und
| errated_ne...
|
| Now it feels like a cheatcode, at least when it comes to
| verbatim searches (probably because the entire message
| database is now indexed, if I had to guess).
|
| Seriously, try searching for the letter "e" and click
| "View All". You will get effectively every message you've
| ever sent or received, in a single, reasonably scrollable
| list. For me it dates back to 2018.
| nofunsir wrote:
| I personally sent several scathing emails directly to
| directors about the issue. I have a long iMessage history
| and there was a point that just entering a single
| character in the search field would lock up my mac, let
| alone my older iPhone.
|
| I have noticed and appreciate the change, so my headcanon
| is that they actually do read feedback. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| I watched an elderly mathematics professor manually type a
| full URL into the windows search box, complete with "https",
| and I thought to myself "surely that won't work" and lo and
| behold...
| KPGv2 wrote:
| You mean he searched for a URL and received something that
| was an exact match as his sole result? Sounds like the
| search worked perfectly.
|
| What do you think should've happened? The search say "I
| know what you're searching for, but I refuse to help
| because your dumb ass should've typed this into a web
| browser address bar?"
|
| This isn't 1995. Computers have access to the Internet, and
| there's no reason your computer's search bar should only
| search local.
|
| Now, if he'd had a file with that as its name, and a text
| document with that URL, I would've expected those first.
| Maybe not at first. Depends on disk space allocated to
| indexing.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| I didn't mean to elicit hostilities, my comment is in the
| context of the parent comment where they are discussing
| displeasure with the web search results coming from the
| Windows search bar. As a more technically literate user,
| I would prefer for no web results except from my web
| browser, but I was sharing a corollary to that.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >It is mind-boggling, how in this day and age search
| functions can still be soooo bad in so many places on the web
| and inside applications.
|
| You mean to say that you think they just somehow forgot to
| optimize these fundamental things to work well? No.... If the
| search functionality provided by an otherwise highly capable,
| ultra-rich tech company is an utter piece of shit, it's
| intentional. The optimization is elsewhere, while the users
| are left stuck with a deformed excuse.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Anyone downvoting feel like instead explaining their
| reasoning? Or just how search can be such utter shit in
| certain contexts, despite often being developed by
| companies like Microsoft, Apple, and even fucking Google of
| all things?
| Belopolye wrote:
| People sure love to embody the "leave the multi-billion
| dollar corporation alone" meme.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Ok, this is too good. When I clicked on the App Store link,
| it opened the App Store and a "What's New" dialog popped up
| and the only thing highlighted was "Improved Search".
| yapyap wrote:
| It's not mind boggling, it's on purpose
| remus wrote:
| Not to stick up for the search in the app store, but I don't
| think it is necessarily that straightforward, particularly
| where there is money to be made by gaming the ranking.
| w0m wrote:
| if there's a system; people will go out of their way to
| game it if there's potentially $$$ involved.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| See: companies naming themselves "Aardvark (plumbing,
| electrician, locksmith, moving) in the day of phone
| books.
| accrual wrote:
| This should disable the start menu web search on Windows 11.
| It's one of the first .reg tweaks I apply to a new system:
| Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_C
| URRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
| "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions"=dword:00000001
| psunavy03 wrote:
| https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/
|
| It's sad there needs to be a third-party app for local
| Windows search, but it works . . .
| dylan604 wrote:
| It helps to realize that the search is less of a tool for you
| to find information and more of a tool to show you an ad
| targeted on your search query. That's why ads are the top
| results and the organic data you wanted is after the fold.
| You're asking an ad company for information, and you don't
| expect an ad as a result? They are only continuing to show
| the organic results to tease you into coming back..
| deanishe wrote:
| Is Apple really an ad company?
|
| I think it's reasonable to expect better from them.
| fsflover wrote:
| They aim to become one:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/19/apple-now-directly-
| sell...
|
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/04/10/apple-makes-
| it-re...
| comprev wrote:
| Since Apple take a slice of the App store sale it's in
| their best interest to "feature" apps which are already
| popular and bring in good revenue.
|
| Why promote an app with 100 sales over another with
| 10,000?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why do people continue asking this question? Why do
| people think Apple is not collecting data to serve ads?
| Do they not remember being asked about it when setting up
| their devices when the ask if you want to share or not?
| Have they not seen the privacy options about Apple's ad
| network? Is it actual ignorance or head in the sand?
| zevon wrote:
| The original comment was about Apple's App Store. I assume
| there are financial ways to get your App "featured" there
| or something like that but as far as I know, you can't
| financially take direct influence on whatever logic Apple
| uses to sort search results there. Yet, it can still be
| spectacularly difficult to find an App - even if you type
| in its exact name, as indicated by OP (can confirm from my
| experience).
|
| If you have a theory about what Apple's motivation to
| actively serve such bad results could be, I'd be interested
| to hear it. I've always sort of assumed that the root cause
| for this is some combination of neglect on Apple's part and
| attempts at gaming the system by developers (I don't know
| much about developing for the App Store, but I presume
| there are forms of SEO-like activities that can be done in
| attempts to bump up your app).
| dylan604 wrote:
| Most ad sales platforms have auctions for ad slots and/or
| keywords. If you want to game the system and have money
| to burn as growth hacking, you can place a larger value
| in those auctions/keywords to win a chance at your ad
| being placed in front of more eyeballs. When it comes to
| apps/games especially, people will chose whatever is
| posted from laziness, fomo, or just tired of looking and
| picking the easy route. I suspect that when you get an
| _unrelated_ ad to your search, it 's because someone else
| was willing to spend more money for those search terms
| than someone with more relevant matches. It's always
| going to be about those Benjamins.
| zevon wrote:
| I get that it's always be about money in the end but I
| understand this sub-thread to be a bit more specific: Is
| there an ad sales platform run by Apple where your
| Benjamins have influence on the search ranking in the App
| Store? I and many other people here are _not_ talking
| about things that are clearly ads (like a "featured"
| result or the ads shown by google and other search
| engines).
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Tangent; put lists in alphabetical order! Or some other order
| which makes sense to the user in the context, like date, or
| priority. Something which _is not_ unordered, coincidence,
| whatever the hashtable or nosql DB produced, order of
| creation when that isn 't an important ordering in the
| domain, some internal or even visible GUID.
|
| Worse if there's no filter, worse if it's a dropdown and
| there's no way to type the desired name, only look.
| freedomben wrote:
| Seriously, especially when _the substring is in the title or
| filename_. Google drive searching is infuriating for that. It
| will pull up barely related documents to my search term that
| has the word buried in the content, and not even show the
| file that has my search term verbatim in the filename or
| title. If there 's one company I expect a really great search
| experience with, it's Google, and yet it's been this way for
| years and years...
| zf00002 wrote:
| It's like Youtube adding a section of videos you've already
| watched and have nothing to do with your search, in search
| results.
| firefax wrote:
| >It is mind-boggling, how in this day and age search
| functions can still be soooo bad in so many places on the web
| and inside applications
|
| Not really, if you understand how modern search algorithms
| work.
|
| Pagerank[1] relies on link analysis -- you see who links to
| whom, and combine that with information on the traffic each
| site gets to suss out which sites are more likely to be
| sought out.
|
| None of that data is available when you're searching through
| your local hard drive -- you have to use basic search
| operators like AND, OR, or use negation (Eg: "Star Wars
| -film" to find information on the space laser thing)
|
| Unfortunately, we don't train folks on how to search anymore,
| so when "the algorithm" doesn't produce what they are looking
| for, folks have no ability to conduct their own search.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| App Store search takes a while to surface exact-name searches
| for newly released apps. No idea why.
| lapcat wrote:
| Apple is generally bad at search. For further evidence, see
| their developer website. To get anything useful out of it, I
| have to use a custom Google search:
| https://www.google.com/search?num=100&udm=14&q=site%3Adevelo...
|
| Some commenters are presenting a conspiracy theory about how
| Apple is intentionally sabotaging App Store search, perhaps
| with the goal of maximizing App Store search ad revenue. I
| think the empirical evidence, covering all examples of Apple
| search, points to incompetence rather than malice. Money does
| factor in, but again, not in a conspiratorial way: rather,
| Apple simply has no monetary incentive to fix their own
| incompetence. It's complacency rather than conspiracy. This is
| what happens with monopolies and duopolies: they've already got
| essentially a captive audience, so they no longer need to put
| in the effort to compete. They just "phone it in", so to speak.
|
| I don't think that Apple wants a bunch of scams in the App
| Store. But when developers and users are practically throwing
| money at Apple, no matter what Apple does or doesn't do, and
| "services" margins are 70%, there's a great temptation to
| pocket the profits and shrug.
|
| For another example of how Apple is bad at search, look at the
| Settings app. Awful. But again, it's not sabotage. That would
| be silly and pointless. It's just pure and simple incompetence
| and complacency.
| xp84 wrote:
| I agree fully about how they have proven their incompetence,
| but let's imagine you are a PM there and you pitch a feature
| "Fixing App Store search using well-known strategies and
| techniques"
|
| I can't imagine that especially Tim Cook's Apple is naive
| enough to not realize that's going to dent ad revenue, since
| most developers have to buy ads directly because of the
| current flaws. So it seems like that project won't be
| approved because your boss and their boss are going to know
| that you'll be losing Apple a ton of sweet, sweet pure-profit
| revenue if you succeed. If it would _make_ Apple 100 million
| dollars in profits to fix it, especially for a neatly
| encapsulated problem like App Store, where it wouldn't be
| that disruptive to just rip and replace the search engine,
| Apple would just fix it.
|
| All the Mac and iPhone search incompetence, it'd be revenue
| neutral to fix, and not lend itself to flashy advertising
| like "liquid glass" does, so that's why that'll never happen.
| lapcat wrote:
| > most developers have to buy ads directly because of the
| current flaws.
|
| I wouldn't say it's because of the flaws. It's because of
| the design: regardless of how well search works, the top
| hit is always an ad. At best, even with search working
| perfectly, a search for your own app would return your app
| as the #2 hit at highest. The search ad system still
| incentivizes developers to buy ads for searches of their
| own app, if only as a defensive measure to prevent other
| developers from inserting their apps at the #1 spot. And
| Apple makes money, and you pay money, if App Store users
| click on your own ad for your own app at the #1 spot rather
| than the "free" search result at the #2 spot.
|
| Oh yeah, and you can't block App Store search ads with an
| ad blocker. Consider how the App Store is entirely native
| and has no web-based purchases or downloads.
| xp84 wrote:
| I hear you, and agree that is true. But consider this
| angle:
|
| Without buying an ad, but with a competent organic
| search:
|
| Customer searches "Ublock origin". Results: (This is
| actually a real life test)
|
| 1. (Ad) Adblock Pro for Safari
|
| Note: The rest are actual organic "results"!
|
| 2. Brave Browser & Search Engine (WTF?)
|
| 3. Ublock: Ad Blocker, Speed Test
|
| 4. Firefox Focus: Privacy Browser
|
| 5: Same as #1 but organic
|
| 6: AdGuard
|
| I gave up trying to find actual Ublock Origin Lite in
| these results, but I did install it on my phone earlier
| so it must be in there somewhere.
|
| A working search would have Ublock Origin Lite as #2
| after the ad. If I'm Ublock Origin Lite, I might be
| satisfied with this and trust that anyone who isn't too
| easily distracted should be able to find me right there
| above the fold. So I'd be less likely to buy an ad than I
| am in our real world. #2 isn't as good as #1, but it's
| good enough for a lot of people. Combine this with not
| allowing people to infringe trademarks in their keywords
| or whatever shenanigans is going on above, and the App
| Store would be a lot less of a scamware cesspool. And
| boy, do scams pay well!
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Apple Podcast search never fails to enrage me. There's no way
| to search within a specific show, just all your followed
| shows at once. Even if you know the exact episode title, if
| it has common words in it, you'll get a stream of garbage. It
| treats any match in the episode description with the same
| weight as an exact match of the episode title. So I have to
| go on the web, search the specific podcast to figure out the
| date, then just scroll to it in Apple Podcasts.
| ygritte wrote:
| I get shown a fucking ad for Google Chrome when searching for
| "ublock origin lite" in the iOS app store.
| kaptainscarlet wrote:
| Same. It never used to show them. It only started recently.
| But it's only partially letting some ads through. Youtube
| video ads are still blocked which is good.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I tried on the mac store.
|
| For the unquoted search, it now comes in 7th for me.
|
| If I just search for ublock, I don't see it at all.
|
| The mac store has long been bad, but this seems worse.
| coffeecoders wrote:
| Search is bad everywhere these days.
|
| Honestly, even Google search with "terms reddit" is better than
| Reddit's own built-in search. That says a lot.
|
| Same deal on may mac. Unless I know the exact file name, Finder
| search is useless. Spotlight will happily surface a PDF from
| 2017 before showing the text file you saved yesterday.
|
| Which brings me to the question: why is search so hard?
| ymolodtsov wrote:
| This doesn't really make Apple look better, but a huge part of
| it is surely how recent the Ublock Origin app for iOS is. New
| apps take time to propagate and become good responses. Which
| makes sense, you wouldn't want someone else to be able to
| instantly cover Ublock Origin itself with a copycat app (not
| that it doesn't happen anyway).
| bigyabai wrote:
| Seems like the copycat issue happens regardless:
| https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-
| imper...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Why use an app store. Is Apple more trustworthy than the author
| of this app. Think about it
|
| The company continues to increase its advertising services
| revenue. In terms of protecting computer buyers from
| advertising and associated surveillance, one could reason that
| its interests are conflicted
|
| App store "search" has always been a joke. It has never been
| suitable for app "discovery". The company would rather computer
| owners select from lists of recommended apps
| MarcusE1W wrote:
| With just
|
| ublock origin lite
|
| I get it in position 1 one (after one unrelated ad).
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I needed to add search to my own website. I wanted it to be
| local search (the titles for the documents are all available
| locally). I tried several different popular 1000s of stars
| JavaScript search libraries. All but one failed on simple
| searches. Like if the title was "See Spot Run to the Park" and
| my search was "Park" or "Run" this title would not be listed as
| a result and titles with neither word would appear. I reported
| the issues, they were ignored as "working as intended". Not
| sure why anyone uses these libraries. I suspect they don't
| actually test. The plug them in, it appears to work at a
| glance, and they ship it.
|
| I'm talking about Fuse.js, FlexSearch.js, etc.... I don't
| remember which other ones I tried but was shocked out bad the
| results were
| brycewray wrote:
| Have you tried Pagefind?
|
| https://github.com/Pagefind/pagefind
|
| https://pagefind.app/
| firefax wrote:
| Does anyone have the canonical link and care to share?
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| Installs, but trying to enable in Safari throws an error: "Unable
| to load uBlock Origin Lite."
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Update iOS to 18.6
| rckt wrote:
| I'm a long-time user of Wipr. Does the job perfectly.
| thijsvandien wrote:
| Generally it works well, but what's particularly annoying is
| that it hides cookie walls, resulting in non-functional
| websites until I disable content blockers, close the dialog and
| re-enable them. Not sure if uBlock does any better, though.
| ron_k wrote:
| This is my only complaint. Most of the websites work fine,
| but others get stuck. I don't know if Wipr 2 solved the
| issue.
| jraph wrote:
| We occasionally have this with the actual full uBlock
| Origin on Firefox as well.
|
| I don't think there's a general solution for this issue.
| Content blockers need to provide a workaround for each
| situation, if at all possible.
|
| At least it's possible to contribute to uBlock Origin's
| filters.
| layer8 wrote:
| Ghostery does the same, but has more fine-grained per-website
| controls. You can for example turn off just the consent-
| popup-blocker function for a website while keeping the anti-
| tracking ad-blocking functions.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Use a bookmarklet to sweep sticky elements for those
| situation. Not ideal, but works fine.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Use Safari's own built-in "Hide Distracting Items". It's
| also pretty good at hiding the few remaining "disable your
| ad blocker to continue" popups Wipr doesn't yet catch.
| drukenemo wrote:
| Origin feels much faster to me than Wipr
| v7engine wrote:
| I don't know if it is working, because sometimes, I see Google
| Adsense ads on Wordle site.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| I've been using Adguard for a couple years and have had no
| problems. I think I've only seen ads slip through a couple times.
| If there's anyone who's able to compare, is there any real
| difference between these ad blockers?
| encom wrote:
| It's been a few years since I've used an Iphone, but back then
| I used AdGuard. It wasn't terrible, but I encountered frequent
| breakage, and updating it (rules) was miserable and slow.
|
| The generally awful and sad state of web browing on IOS was a
| big reason why I switched to Android.
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Thanks for asking this. I have always had Adguard on iOS with
| no issues wondering if there is any extra benefit to switching
| to uBlock Origin Lite on Safari.
| saw-lau wrote:
| Just adding another alternative that I've been using for years
| for people to consider - 1Blocker.
|
| https://1blocker.com/
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| 1Blocker is worth the one time lifetime purchase, works with
| your family iCloud+ account.
| DASD wrote:
| This and Little Snitch Mini.
| nottorp wrote:
| Commercial offerings can always slip towards allowing some ads
| for pay.
|
| Maybe not today, but there's no guarantee the company won't get
| sold tomorrow.
|
| Not to mention that your AdGuard seems to be one of the 10
| billion apps that competes for my subscriptions budget.
| drukenemo wrote:
| I've been testing it in beta for a month or so and I can report
| that at least to me websites load much faster than with Adguard
| or Wipr.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| i've also been using adguard for years. Yes it's paid, but it
| actually works. I use it on mac and ios. none of the free( at
| the time) ad blockers worked as well. or they constantly needed
| updates, or certain things broke etc. adguard is a great
| product. not affiliated, not sponsored, just a user.
| vehemenz wrote:
| It's even better than you say because the free version--for
| Safari only--works very well.
| al_borland wrote:
| AdGuard always bothered me. On macOS it sits in the menubar and
| has about a half dozen extensions that load into Safari. It
| felt like a bloated sprawling mess. I just installed uBOL and
| it's a single extension that sits in Safari. It feel much more
| clean and unobtrusive.
| rafram wrote:
| > has about a half dozen extensions that load into Safari
|
| That's because there's a limit on the number of filters per
| extension. uBO may eventually need to do the same.
| al_borland wrote:
| Interesting...
|
| https://adguard.com/kb/adguard-for-safari/solving-
| problems/r...
|
| Sounds like I should direct a portion of my ire toward
| Apple on this.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Absolutely not. They are trying to protect you, can you
| _imagine_ how awful Safari would be if it let you
| sideload such nasty extensions? It would be just like
| Chrome, absolutely no market variation to speak of!
| Despicable.
|
| It's really AdGuard's fault for failing to fit their
| functionality within the arbitrary constraints Apple
| decided was suitable for a runtime.
| TingPing wrote:
| It is not an arbitrary decision.
|
| For one Safari compiles block lists to perform better,
| but it can be noticed at startup for big lists.
|
| Then there is just resource constraints since the focus
| is mobile. Chrome on mobile notably supports no
| extensions.
|
| But I do wish desktop Safari was more lenient.
| Citizen8396 wrote:
| You can disable the menu bar icon in settings...
| thimabi wrote:
| That's in fact one of the gripes I have with certain MacOS
| software. It would be far better if menu bar icons were
| opt-in rather than opt-out. The average non-technical user
| eventually ends up having tons of these icons in the menu
| bar.
| saagarjha wrote:
| The latest version will let you remove them even if the
| app itself doesn't let you.
| thimabi wrote:
| I mean, that's great, but it would be even better if
| MacOS required explicit permissions _before_ allowing an
| app to place an icon in the menu bar.
| al_borland wrote:
| The existence of a menubar icon as an option implies it's a
| service that needs to run all the time. I compare that
| perception to what uBOL mentions in the App Store
| description.
|
| > uBOL is entirely declarative, meaning there is no need
| for a permanent uBOL process for the filtering to occur,
| and CSS/JS injection-based content filtering is performed
| reliably by the browser itself rather than by the
| extension. This means that uBOL itself does not consume CPU
| memory resources while content blocking is ongoing --
| uBOL's service worker process is required _only_ when you
| interact with the popup panel or the option pages.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I believe if you do that, the filter lists don't auto-
| update. That's the reason for the menu bar app.
| slowmotiony wrote:
| I cancelled my Adguard subscription when I found out the
| founder and team are russian. That's big enough of a difference
| for me.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Used to be Russian. The company moved to Cyprus.
|
| Most of their software (including AdGuard for Safari and
| AdGuard Home) is open source, so there's little chance of
| anything nefarious happening.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| Except there's no easy way to verify that what you get from
| the store has been built, unmodified, from the public
| source - afaik.
|
| (I still use AdGuard fwiw)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| AdGuard Home has no "store". You download it yourself. I
| believe the same is possible for the Safari plugin -
| they're not required to be obtained from the App Store.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Adguard on macOS constantly runs an Electron app in the
| background :(
| robertoandred wrote:
| It doesn't. The Electron app is for settings, and you can
| just quit it.
| microflash wrote:
| Adguard is still better because it ships multiple extensions
| that you can enable to bypass filter limit on iOS. uBlock
| Origin Lite is not able to block annoying Google sign in pop
| ups, yet.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| So I tapped the link on my iPhone and was taken to the App Store.
|
| The download button is available. Great! Finally I can block ads
| in mobile too.
|
| It installs, opening it is a simple message saying I need to
| enable it in Safari settings. Strange, but ok.
|
| I go to Settings -> Safari -> Extensions -> uBlock Origin Lite.
|
| > "uBO Lite" is not available for this version of Safari.
|
| This feels like a series of failures, why is it available for
| download on iPhone if it doesn't work at all? Is iOS Safari
| really that different to Mac Safari?
| cm2187 wrote:
| Update your iphone and it will work
| isodev wrote:
| The whole point of going iPhone is not to have to deal with
| these kinds of situations.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Bad news: these kinds of situations are inevitable. You've
| abdicated control of your digital life for a comforting lie
| antihero wrote:
| The whole point of using an iPhone is that you don't have
| to update it?
| josefx wrote:
| Choice and platform fragmentation in one neat bundle. I
| am almost surprised that Apple doesn't just force updates
| on everyone when it is possible just to maintain that
| additional bit of uniformity and conformity for its
| "think different" crowd.
| isodev wrote:
| No, the App Store allowing you to download an app with an
| extension target that doesn't match the current system.
| At the very least there should be a warning or a button
| to update iOS if that's possible on the current device.
| TingPing wrote:
| Surely a packaging mistake.
| xandrius wrote:
| So you never got gatekept by Apple from accessing a feature
| unless you had a specific version of the OS? Heck, even
| macbooks get killed every year by not allowing them to
| build for newer iOS versions.
|
| The whole point of Apple, one could say, IS to make sure to
| forcibly make you update to access a new feature. That way
| either you can update or you've got to buy a brand-new
| device.
| duskwuff wrote:
| I'm curious what you believe the alternative is - "new
| features magically appear in released versions of an
| operating system without the software being updated"?
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Seems to work fine on Linux unless you stick to kernels
| that are multiple _decades_ old.
|
| Whether it's technical or social the situation on iOS is
| clearly inferior.
| criley2 wrote:
| >The whole point of going iPhone is not to have to deal
| with these kinds of situations.
|
| This is actually really funny because Android users have
| had the ability to use any browser they want for like a
| decade+, including browsers with adblock built in, and
| browsers with fully featured extension systems supporting
| all major desktop ad blockers, and it all just works. One
| click download, no setup, nothing.
|
| This is one of those places where Apple has intentionally
| made a terrible UX for you to steer you into their walled
| garden / first party products. You have to use Safari, you
| have to dig around in settings, you have to make sure your
| versions all line up, it's pointless rigamarole that will
| mean the majority of users stick with stock Safari, just as
| intended.
|
| In many ways, things "just work" on any platform Apple
| product managers aren't allowed to muck with...
| ryandrake wrote:
| This doesn't work for phones that are limited to earlier iOS
| versions. Content blocking was available to developers all
| the way back to iOS 9. Why would these guys deliberately
| limit their software to only the latest versions?
| bhaney wrote:
| There was a bug in Safari's registerContentScripts that was
| only just recently fixed in 18.6. uBOL needs that bugfix.
| ComradeMatis wrote:
| There was also bugs in the declarative net request
| implementation that was also just recently fixed - quite
| a few bugs have been holding uBlock back. The reason why
| uBlock hadn't come sooner was because DNR hadn't been
| implemented which would have required the developer to go
| out of their way to specifically re-write uBlock Origin
| to work with Apple's content blocking API but now Apple
| has implemented DNR it should open up the possibility for
| more choice in the content blocking extensions market.
| pdpi wrote:
| I've used Firefox Focus as an ad blocker for Safari on iOS for
| several years now. I don't actually use it as my browser, I
| just use Safari as normal, but it integrates with Safari, and
| seems to work well enough.
| instig007 wrote:
| Try Brave browser on iOS, it cuts everything irrelevant
| without third-party apps, and you also get background media
| playback on locked screen (settings toggle) on youtube as
| "one more thing".
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| Brave is awesome. Skip the silly crypto integration and
| enjoy the amazing integrated ad-blocking.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Firefox Focus has this feature too! (ie: play YouTube
| videos from lock screen controls, keeps playing with screen
| off)
| mbirth wrote:
| Wipr 2. One time payment for macOS and mobile. And it even
| blocks ads on YouTube (when watched via Safari).
| prrar wrote:
| One time until Wipr 3, coming from a Wipr 1/2 user, just to
| be clear.
| SirMaster wrote:
| Why would you need to upgrade to wipr 3 if wipr 2 does
| what you want and need?
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| Ad blocking is an arms race and your ad blocker needs
| continuous updates to continue working on large sites.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Adblockers don't just keep working forever.
| mbirth wrote:
| From what I can find, the original Wipr was released for
| iOS in Sep 2015 and the macOS version followed in Aug
| 2018.
|
| Wipr 2 is a complete rewrite and was released in Nov
| 2024. So, in theory, for PS1.99 you could've gotten 9
| years of ad-blocking on iOS and for another PS1.99 the
| same on macOS for 6 years.
|
| And since this requires maintenance of the blocklists and
| associated code, I am totally fine with paying a small
| amount once every few years. And I'm not even forced to
| pay as the older versions usually continue to run -
| albeit on life support.
| caycep wrote:
| yea...I in theory would be excited about ublock coming to
| safari but Wipr is working so well I'm kind of reluctant
| to change...I do want to support gorhill working on MacOS
| though...
| lilyball wrote:
| Good! Wipr was very cheap, so was Wipr 2, if paying a
| tiny fee every few years for a well-made app that does
| its job well keeps the developer in business and able to
| keep maintaining it, then I'm happy to do it.
|
| That said, I'm not actually convinced there will be a
| Wipr 3, at least not without some significant change to
| the ecosystem first. Wipr 2 was a complete rewrite of
| Wipr, there's no reason to expect it will need yet
| another complete rewrite.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Seconded. It's so very great! I finally switched off
| 1Blocker to use it.
| ErneX wrote:
| Extensions for Safari on iOS and iPadOS have been available
| since 2021, I've been using ad blockers on those systems, but
| it's nice the have uBlock now.
| lapcat wrote:
| This is a bit misleading. Safari content blockers have been
| available on iOS since 2015. In 2021, JavaScript-based Safari
| web extensions were added.
| karel-3d wrote:
| Trying to actually write one before, it's incredibly
| frustrating experience, as you still need to have some
| weird native glue code in in Swift/Obj-C. And everything is
| under-documented, as it the true Apple Experience. (I
| forgot the details. I can find the code on github, maybe.)
|
| If you ask yourself why there are so little Safari
| extensions, this is why.
|
| edit: I look at the code now... I needed to wrestle with
| BOTH cocoapods and npm, at which point I gave up
| darrenf wrote:
| [EDIT to clarify: here I'm talking about writing a
| javascript based extension, not a content blocker]
|
| That's not my experience (in the admittedly only browser
| extension I've ever written).
|
| After getting it working to my satisfaction in Chrome and
| Firefox, I created the Safari macOS/iOS versions by
| running $ xcrun safari-web-extension-
| converter --bundle-identifier <bundle ID> .
|
| in my repo. Then I opened xcode, configured the
| signing/capabilities, and built it. IIRC I had to create
| the directory for the output because xcode didn't do it
| itself, but once that was done I could install it to both
| macOS and iOS. Honestly I was surprised it was so little
| effort. I don't doubt that an extension with more
| functionality than mine might require a jumping through a
| lot more hoops, but it definitely _can_ be easy to
| successfully target Safari IME.
| karel-3d wrote:
| Interesting. Maybe I tried to do something too complex, I
| don't remember.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/
| cre...
|
| Here they talk about the "container" that needs to be in
| Swift/Obj-C. I remember I used to have some problems with
| the "container" application
|
| I think the issue starts to be when you want your
| extension/app to have any kind of settings that is
| retained? I don't remember, really.
| darrenf wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't go the "Creating a Safari web extension"
| route, rather I went via "Packaging a web extension for
| Safari": https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari
| services/pac...
|
| I note that they say the command has changed from the one
| I used, it's now: xcrun safari-web-
| extension-packager
|
| My extension has storage/settings, and it works fine. I
| have edited no Swift code at all.
| ErneX wrote:
| Even better, thanks for the correction.
| bspammer wrote:
| It seems to require iOS 18.6, it's working for me after
| updating.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Thank you, this should be at the top.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Can confirm. Installed uBlock onto an 18.5 device, got the
| 'not supported' message. Upgraded to 18.6 and now it works.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Which apparently my iPhone SE doesn't qualify for.
|
| Every time this happens, I tell myself, "maybe it's time to
| try and android phone"
| MarcusE1W wrote:
| I don't know which version of the iPhone SE you have, there
| have been several over time. Mine is from 2016 (had to look
| that up). No update to iOS 18, true.
|
| In your specific case you have to look very carefully in
| the Android world to avoid an even worse situation. I think
| there are a few Android models now that promise several
| years of updates, remains to be seen, though. If this is
| your beef with Apple, then I doubt you will feel much
| better with Android.
| turtlebits wrote:
| 9 year old phone? Don't worry, google won't care about you
| either.
| Cipater wrote:
| The 3rd generation iPhone SE was released in 2022.
| thesabreslicer wrote:
| the 2022 iPhone SE supports iOS 18
| westonmyers wrote:
| Both iPhone SE (3rd generation) [2022] and iPhone SE (2nd
| generation) [2020] support iOS 18.6.
|
| So that commenter must not have those generations and
| your comment doesn't help.
|
| iPhone SE (1st generation) [2016] is stuck on iOS 15 but
| still receiving security updates, like 15.8.4 from the
| spring.
| hexagonwin wrote:
| at least they don't prevent firefox from supporting a 11
| years old version.
| connicpu wrote:
| I gotta say, using full fat uBlock Origin in Firefox on my
| android is pretty great.
| j1elo wrote:
| You'been answered already about the support periods in
| Android, but let me add more for you (and others mentioning
| support times of the system): in Android this problem
| doesn't exist to begin with. The fact that getting a new
| web browser version is anchored to getting a whole new
| operating system version, is preposterous and absurd, pure
| planned obsolescence from Apple. You would just upgrade
| your Chrome, Brave, Firefox, or whatever browser app, and
| do with them what your were trying to do. (in this case
| install a browser extension, for which the best one qould
| be Firefox).
|
| This situation with iOS sounds as ridiculous as if it was
| mandatory to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 in order
| to update the Edge browser. (Edited to remove useless rant)
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Apple has way better backwards compatibility than Android.
| Your 9 year old iPhone SE is still getting security
| updates.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I didn't know there was a 18.6. I usually get notification.
| jwrallie wrote:
| Update notifications seem to be delayed in iOS. Batches of
| devices get them at different times for A/B testing and
| reduce bandwidth requirements.
|
| This is based on my personal observation of different
| devices. I could be wrong.
| apozem wrote:
| > It installs, opening it is a simple message saying I need to
| enable it in Safari settings. Strange, but ok.
|
| I've made several Safari extensions for iOS, and they all have
| to do this.
|
| Apple provides no API for an app to enable its own Safari
| extension. It _also_ has no public API on iOS to deeplink to
| the Settings page for enabling the extension. You just have to
| tell users where to go and hope they don't get lost.
|
| (There is an API on macOS to quickly open Safari extension
| settings. It's nice! Maybe they'll add it to iOS someday.)
| MortyWaves wrote:
| Does an app for that even need to exist? Why can't extensions
| be a standalone thing in the store?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Because Apple's distribution model centers around
| everything being bundled as an app
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Why can't extensions be a standalone thing in the store?
|
| 1) Because then you need a whole parallel set of processes
| for configuring, updating, and uninstalling those things,
| distinct from the existing processes for apps. And you need
| to make that process accessible to users who may be used to
| everything being an app.
|
| 2) A nontrivial number of browser extensions on iOS are
| part of standalone apps anyway, like password managers or
| bookmarking tools. It'd be very strange to have both app-
| with-browser-extensions and browser-only-extensions, or to
| require some extensions to be installed and updated in
| tandem with a companion app for expected functionality.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Finally you can block ads on mobile? I've been using AdGuard
| for iOS Safari for ten years or so.
| themadturk wrote:
| And I've been using Wipr and 1Blocker since iPhone SE-1 with
| Safari...
| sometimes_all wrote:
| Gave it a try; works better than expected. Has the custom filter
| tool (similar to element picker in main Origin), so I can block
| out the Linkedin Feed and other pestilence that Wipr couldn't
| tackle.
|
| Thanks a million to gorhill!
| operator-name wrote:
| Just tested it out on iOS. It's scored 94% against Adguard's 79%
| on this test page: https://adblock.turtlecute.org/
| dmd wrote:
| Wipr2 gets 100.
| patentatt wrote:
| Must depend on your block lists, I get a 98% using AdGuard on
| iOS. I'm using easy list, easy privacy, fanboy annoyances and
| social filters, and hagezi's light dns filter. I'm a big fan of
| ublock but I don't see much issue with AdGuard for now.
| danieldk wrote:
| Wipr 2 scores 100%
| Asmod4n wrote:
| I'm getting different results for it with every reload, is that
| normal? Ranges form 56-96%
| dizhn wrote:
| It says on the page that ublock origin breaks the results. Now
| that might be the full firefox version but in my test with
| Firefox the result was 1 blocked on the page but 125 on the
| extensions own notification.
| gorhill wrote:
| Those webpages used to "test" blockers are frowned upon, see:
| https://x.com/gorhill/status/1583581072197312512
|
| There are many reasons that sort of online tools are not able
| to reliably test a content blocker:
|
| - Many content blockers are designed to fool pages to think no
| content blocker is installed
|
| - Content blockers filter according to real, actual cases, not
| synthetic cases used in their tests
| saagarjha wrote:
| Would you be supportive of an "adblock test page" that
| literally just reports if the adblocker is working correctly,
| rather than how good it is? Like maybe an EICAR-like rule
| that is added to EasyList that matches an element on that
| page?
| eikenberry wrote:
| I just tested with Firefox and uBlock Origin in the stricter
| "medium mode" and got a score of 1%. So yeah, I don't think
| these test pages are that great.
| vehemenz wrote:
| I got 7% with uBO Lite on iOS. The test doesn't seem that
| reliable.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I'm using AdGuard with Mac Safari and I get 96%. Perhaps this
| is a configuration issue. But if that site doesn't test for
| false positives, which it doesn't seem to, I'd say the result
| is pretty meaningless.
| humptybumpty wrote:
| Wipr 2 full 100%
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Nice. Although there are content blockers for the iPhone, uBLock
| is the best. One of the worst aspects of iOS is that content
| blockers for it generally suck, and the web sucks without them.
| mottiden wrote:
| is this ad blocker the best?
| freehorse wrote:
| If anybody is interested, the original (not lite) firefox-version
| of uBlock Origin works just well in Orion (webkit based browser
| by kagi) in both iPhone and Mac. It is great to have it for
| safari though anyway as safari is the default browser in these
| platforms.
| bkienzle3 wrote:
| I've been using this browser for several months now. I think
| it's the best option if you want access the addons that are
| available in Firefox for Android. However, the browser is
| definitely still beta. I often encounter bugs, mostly with tab
| behavior. These are still pretty manageable though, and worth
| the tradeoff to me.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| I love, LOVE Orion. Use it both on iPhone and Mac. However,
| lately, it's becoming more and more buggy and sluggish. Writing
| this in Orion though - just have to quit it a few times a day
| to battle the RAM consumption and sluggishness. So yeah, like
| the other person says: DEFINETELY still beta. And yes, I report
| the issues.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Do you have a significant number of tabs opened? I've noticed
| a similar issue and my hunch is it was due to "tab rot".
| Shank wrote:
| I've found this to be the case, but I absolutely do not
| consider this acceptable. It's just uncontrolled memory
| use. I also experience this on Safari though, so I suspect
| it's a WebKit issue.
| DavideNL wrote:
| Orion does NOT support all Firefox/Chromium extensions. Many
| extensions only work partly;
|
| The fact that it does not produce errors, does not mean it
| works.
|
| I hate that they (Kagi) make it *look like* extensions work...
|
| For reference, a cheat sheet:
| https://orionfeedback.org/d/2174-crowdsourced-list-of-extens...
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Why is it region-locked? So weird
| auc wrote:
| This doesn't work on my iPhone 16
|
| Edit: after upgrading the software, it works
| HSO wrote:
| "This app is currently not available in your country or region."
|
| :(
| fsflover wrote:
| A friendly reminder that uBlock Origin _Lite_ can 't protect you
| from modern ad tracking. Consider using Firefox with the original
| version on desktop and support the EU pushing Apple to allow
| alternative browser engines on iOS.
|
| More details:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_Origin_Li...
|
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
| resource_waste wrote:
| Thats the one thing about Apple products. You get all the
| features of SOTA but 5-6 years after its already been in use.
| lencastre wrote:
| Not available in all euro regions
| Trattue wrote:
| Looking forward to try it once it becomes available in my region.
| Although I wish I could just use extensions on iOS Firefox... Or
| at least have a way to sync my bookmarks between Firefox and
| Safari.
| AnonHP wrote:
| Tangential: Anyone here using Magic Lasso? I can't stomach the
| idea of subscribing to an ad blocker for about 30 dollars each
| year and have wondered what it provides compared to others. I've
| been using Firefox Focus (it has an content blocker too), AdGuard
| and NextDNS (which is flaky because I don't want to have a
| profile and instead use the long abandoned app, whose toggle
| doesn't work many a times [tested by visiting test.nextdns.io]).
| For system wide tracker blocking, I use Lockdown Privacy (the
| free option).
| jwr wrote:
| The title is false, because "This app is currently not available
| in your country or region. "
| meindnoch wrote:
| "This app is currently not available in your country or region."
| eviks wrote:
| Great news!
|
| You unfortunately can't add custom filters/cosmetic rules since
| this is the Lite version, rigth?
| prrar wrote:
| Switched from Wipr 2 on my iOS/macOS instantly. Thanks!
| kstrauser wrote:
| How come? Wipr 2 is going a good job for me. Why might I prefer
| uBO?
| xorshift wrote:
| I haven't installed it but I might only because I can't
| disable Wipr 2 for some sites that I want/need. uBO Lite can
| do this. Other than that, I really like Wipr 2 and other apps
| by Kaylee.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Doesn't work on iOS
| augustk wrote:
| After installation you need to enable it in Settings -> Apps ->
| Safari -> Extensions -> uBlock Origin Lite.
|
| I also uninstalled my previous advertising blocker AdBlock Pro
| by selecting "Delete App" in Settings -> General -> iPhone
| Storage -> AdBlock Pro.
| deanc wrote:
| uBlock origin (full version) works quite nicely on Orion Browser,
| which is safari under the hood but supports FF extensions and
| chrome extensions.
| hakunin wrote:
| Weird, it's installed but it won't let me enable it in Safari.
| The "enable" checkbox is inactive. Safari 18.5 on MacOS Sequoia
| 15.5. Restarting the browser, and reinstalling the extension has
| no effect.
| hknws2023saio wrote:
| same here, on Sequoia 15.5 (24F74)
| hakunin wrote:
| Solution: update to Sequoia 15.6 (which comes with Safari 18.6)
| and it works.
| hknws2023saio wrote:
| this worked, thank you
| ndkap wrote:
| This makes me think that UBO Lite wasnt possible without
| something Apple added in the latest version. Is this true?
| Did they finally add something to Safari allowing UBO Lite to
| finally be made? Is that why UBO Lite for Safari didnt exist
| until now?
| nelox wrote:
| I tried the beta. UBOlite interfered with Safari's native hide
| distracting items. The UI was unintuitive for setting features.
| Performance seemed slower than Ghostery. I'm sticking with
| Ghostery, which has none of those issues, until UBOlite matures.
| rock_artist wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something, on latest macOS 15.6 it seems to be
| working but on my iPadOS 26 latest dev release it shows as
| installed but no settings. and it doesn't ask for each website.
| bittercynic wrote:
| Anyone know if there's a possibility this will be available in
| older versions of iOS? I'm very reluctant to update my iPhone.
| It's working well right now, and it seems just about impossible
| to roll back an update if it breaks something important.
| Shank wrote:
| What will it break? You can stay out of date but you're more
| vulnerable to security vulnerabilities and less stuff works.
| kamatour wrote:
| Funny how 'Improved Search' really means 'Good luck finding
| anything unless we get paid.'
| chakintosh wrote:
| uBO was the only reason I switched from Safari to Firefox. Might
| make the switch back now.
| ge96 wrote:
| History channel aliens guy: "is such a thing possible?"
| nntwozz wrote:
| Just became available for me in Sweden, other European countries
| should follow.
| quantum_mech wrote:
| I installed the app on my iPad iOS 18.5, then tried to enable the
| extension in Safari. (Settings -> Apps -> Safari -> Extensions).
|
| Result: "uBo Lite" is not supported by this version of Safari"
| 58028641 wrote:
| You need to update to 18.6 for this to work
| eckelhesten wrote:
| Yup, same thing here. Gonna try on my Mac soon. Will keep us
| updated.
| cromka wrote:
| I switched to Brave about 2 months ago and never looked back. The
| speed difference is astonishing, just mind-blowing. I was always
| convinced that Safari was the fastest on macOS. And mind you that
| I did use an adblock with Safari as well (AdGuard for mac).
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Doesn't Safari block trackers already?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Yes, but not ads.
| jer0me wrote:
| When I try to turn it on in Safari (iOS 18.5) I get:
| Unable To Load "uBlock Origin Lite"
| amoeba wrote:
| Same issue on macOS with Safari 18.5. I think it might require
| a newer version (18.6), see
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/405.
| tekawade wrote:
| I moved from Chrome to Firefox for this.
|
| And found out Firefox is much better browser than Chrome anyway.
| Moved due to post here as well. Can't find the post easily to
| link here for credit.
| imagetic wrote:
| Thank you.
| badosu wrote:
| I don't understand why someone, with some technical education,
| would use any chromium based browser instead of firefox, any
| ideas?
| lulzury wrote:
| That's a pretty limited way of looking at the world: "Why would
| someone only do x instead of y?"
|
| Part of learning to understand others means developing
| cognitive flexibility.
| badosu wrote:
| It would be limited if it _literally_ wasn't a question,
| right?
|
| I'm opening myself to understand things. I don't understand
| the combativeness.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I used to work at Mozilla.
|
| Safari isn't Chromium (it's the opposite, Google forked WebKit
| and they've diverged). But that's not really your point.
|
| There's a lot of reason to use Chrome: deep integration with
| Google (privacy issues aside, it's really useful), better add-
| on dev ecosystem which leads to better add-ons, WebKit was far
| ahead of Gecko for a while, I personally prefer the devtools in
| Chrome, developers tend to verify their website works more in
| Chrome so fewer bugs, iOS is webkit-only, etc.
|
| Firefox is a great browser, especially now. But so is Chrome.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I don't understand why Safari (and any browser) does not include
| ad blocking out of the box, ideally enabled by default but at
| least an option. Nobody like ads. Especially ads that take over a
| majority of your screen space and seem to fight efforts to close
| them (moving, slow response to tapping "X", etc.)
|
| Ads are just a cancer on the web. If a site can only exist by ad
| revenue then it should not exist. Block them all.
| digianarchist wrote:
| Probably an anti-trust issue given their relationship with
| Google.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933206/google-apple-se...
| mproud wrote:
| I've been using Ka-Block!
|
| (Bonus points for being inspired by Star Trek Klingon?)
| alliao wrote:
| i've resisted iOS 18 for so long.. Project Indigo was really
| tempting...but this might just be the thing pushed me to update
| to iOS 18....
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Finally IOS users can experience what I do on my cheap android
| phones where I've been playing youtube ad-free on firefox mobile
| for about a decade.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Do you think uBlock is the only ad blocker? Safari on iOS has
| had ad blockers for ten years.
| ezfe wrote:
| iOS has had adblockers that work with YouTube for
| years...uBlock origin is good but it's not the only one
| concinds wrote:
| People should be way more upset at the fact that Safari
| adblocking _today_ is still inferior to even MV3 Google Chrome.
| Apple 's implementation of declarativeNetRequest was semi-broken
| until the very latest iOS 18.6.
|
| Apple can do the bare minimum, years after everyone else, and
| barely get called out. The Reality Distortion Field is the enemy.
|
| Also funny that other devs had the gall to make people _pay_
| (sometimes subscriptions!) for Safari adblockers inferior to the
| free adblockers on any other browser.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I agree with you regarding how Apple can do the bare minimum
| and barely get called out. But the fact is, I don't know of
| anything who's using declarativeNetRequest on Safari. The
| ecosystem of Safari blocking is centered around the legacy
| technology of content blockers from 2015. And the legacy
| technology works well enough that there's no pressure for
| either Apple or adblocker developers to adopt the new thing.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| The legacy technology is also privacy-protecting in the sense
| that normal ad-blocking on iOS doesn't use any third party JS
| filtering or reading of data on the page.
|
| It breaks down because there are a ton of workarounds sites
| and ad-networks implement so it's not super effective
| compared to MV2 ublock-origin
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The privacy aspect is big. Even if content blocker
| extensions technically aren't as capable, they were nice
| because they could be installed with impunity regardless of
| the party responsible for developing them. It's a tradeoff.
|
| In practice I've found them to be largely effective except
| for the most awful sites that I should probably be finding
| alernatives to instead of using (vote with your eyeballs),
| which is something I do even where "real" uBlock Origin is
| an option.
| btown wrote:
| The release notes mentioning this:
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-not...
|
| Not too many sources I could find other than
| https://matisyahu.blog/2025/07/31/and-it-is-raining-again/ -
| but apparently the bug was so bad that any adblocker attempting
| to use declarativeNetRequest could break all Cloudflare
| websites for the user.
|
| In the wake of Google finally sounding the death knells of
| Manifest V2, it's good to see Apple's at least making progress
| towards... parity with Google's MV3 feature set? Not the
| privacy leadership that Apple's known for, but progress is
| progress.
| observationist wrote:
| The solution is trivial. Don't make Apple applications, don't
| use Apple products. Build for open protocols. Otherwise, go
| through life as if Apple didn't exist.
|
| Walled gardens are an abomination.
| pdntspa wrote:
| Screw Chrome; both Safari and Chrome are inferior to Firefox'
| adblocking toolkit
|
| And for the record Ublock Origin used to have a Safari
| extension. But that was forced to be phased out a couple of OS
| updates ago for reasons I can't remember.
|
| In any case, as someone who will not touch Google's spyware
| browser with a ten-foot pole, it's nice to have a flagship
| alternative to Firefox that does decent adblocking.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I get the best of all worlds by using Orion, I can use uBlock
| Origin (the Firefox version) and also get WebKit which Safari
| uses. Orion seemed unstable for me, but I gave it another shot a
| couple of months ago, and it has been as stable as Safari for me.
| Glad to hear someone gave Safari another AdBlock alternative
| though, the more, the merrier.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| How do you find Orion for web development (if you do any of
| that)?
| EasyMark wrote:
| Sorry I don't do any web dev, I only do firmware/uefi/bios
| nicce wrote:
| I don't know. I have tried to use Orion for long time but it
| has too many bugs. I try it like few times week. Also, this
| extension seems to work better than uBlock in Origin.
| outerspace wrote:
| On the settings page of the extension, I got a popup to allow
| "ib.adnxs.com" access to browsing data. What is this?
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