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Re:macOS Big Sur by izacus on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:26PM (#25072953)
Does it still have adblocking limitations? The same that Chrome wanted to implement?
Re:macOS Big Sur by nikomen on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:31PM (#25073037)
Yes, there's a few features of WebExtensions that Safari chose not to implement. I'm having a hard time finding the article and discussion about this. The missing features prevent ad blockers like uBlock Origin from working.
Re:macOS Big Sur by qz2 on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:37PM (#25073110)
This was a complete deal breaker for me. Half the internet is unusable without a decent ad blocking implementation these days and a decent one is virtually impossible with the charred remains of the API they left behind.

This was actually one of the (many) things that motivated me to migrate away from OSX.

Re:macOS Big Sur by jkelleyrtp on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:41PM (#25073170)
You're not going to find the same AdBlockers that Chrome/FF have, but you will find AdBlockers that _work_. I agree that ads make the web unusable, but I've been content with the various blockers I've tried on Safari, and there's more every day. I use ABP, but 1Blocker and Wipr look good, and Safari's got the first 30% of privacy/adblocking taken care of with their various privacy and reader features.
Re:macOS Big Sur by qz2 on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:44PM (#25073221)
1Blocker is a rip off. Wipr doesn't work properly. ABP lets a lot of ads through. There is nothing that approaches uBlock at all.
Re:macOS Big Sur by ucha on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:11PM (#25073614)
I'm using AdGuard and it covers pretty much everything and is very customizable, including the annoying "accept cookies" banners that we have in Europe.
Re:macOS Big Sur by therealmarv on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:58PM (#25073437)
try Adguard. It's the best one for this Apple interface for adblocking.
Re:macOS Big Sur by saagarjha on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:06PM (#25073550)
…which requires an Electron app to constantly be running for it to really work. Not great.
Re:macOS Big Sur by twistiti on Thursday November 12, 2020 @05:17PM (#25075922)
Untrue in my understanding.

The Electron app needs to run to set options or to force filters update, not the rest of the time. It's still an annoyance but it's better than nothing.

Re:macOS Big Sur by saagarjha on Thursday November 12, 2020 @05:24PM (#25076013)
Changing the filters (e.g. by selecting a new element) requires the app to be running. Or, at least, it did when I stopped using it.
Re:macOS Big Sur by twistiti on Thursday November 12, 2020 @06:34PM (#25076810)
Correct. I understand in that case.

I would love for uBlock to find a workaround.

Re:macOS Big Sur by aledthemathguy on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:01PM (#25074981)
why does it work like this in macos? (meaning - it seems to be running an outside process to block ads, unlike in Chrome where the process is internal to the browser, is this correct?

as a windows user i was puzzled by this when installing adguard

Re:macOS Big Sur by saagarjha on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:35PM (#25075410)
It doesn't, the Adguard developers just chose to write their app in such a way that their main app (which is an Electron app) needs to be in the loop for everything.
Re:macOS Big Sur by mthoms on Thursday November 12, 2020 @06:28PM (#25076746)
Actually it's true - Adguard needs to run as a standalone process that lives in the menu bar in order to work properly with Safari. This permanent process does appear to be Electron based.

My guess is that it's engineered like this to simplify their code base(s) between their various free plugins and their paid "Adguard for Mac" and "Adguard for Windows" apps.

Re:macOS Big Sur by srgpqt on Thursday November 12, 2020 @03:08PM (#25074260)
No problems with Wipr here, at all..
Re:macOS Big Sur by tpush on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:51PM (#25073342)
> Wipr doesn't work properly.

How does it not work properly? Been using it and am pretty satisfied so far.

Re:macOS Big Sur by xodice on Thursday November 12, 2020 @03:15PM (#25074335)
Wipr works outstanding for me on both iOS and macOS.
Re:macOS Big Sur by qz2 on Thursday November 12, 2020 @03:24PM (#25074452)
Still get pop unders on both.
Re:macOS Big Sur by r00fus on Thursday November 12, 2020 @03:47PM (#25074766)
Where? I get 0 popus or popunders and I use wipr and no other adblockers.
Re:macOS Big Sur by qz2 on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:06PM (#25075051)
Try an average torrent site.
Re:macOS Big Sur by johns on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:08PM (#25073586)
Ghostery seems to work fine
Re:macOS Big Sur by konart on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:16PM (#25075166)
People jumped off Ghostery long time ago. Maybe things have changed since the whole Cliqz story
Re:macOS Big Sur by bredren on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:00PM (#25073460)
Consider setting up a pihole locally or on a vps.
Re:macOS Big Sur by josephcsible on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:07PM (#25073569)
This isn't that effective anymore. A lot of sites now proxy their ads through their own Web server for the express purpose of making them harder to block. The only way to effectively block these, without something horribly draconian like breaking TLS, is a browser extension.
Re:macOS Big Sur by bredren on Thursday November 12, 2020 @03:33PM (#25074568)
I wonder if the newly enabled safari extension capabilities paired with pihole largely cover for what is missing from what Chrome can do.
Re:macOS Big Sur by reaperducer on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:51PM (#25074068)
for the express[ed] purpose

This doesn't mean what you think it means. What you wrote means that web sites put text on their pages stating, "We're proxying our ads so you can't block them, nanny nanny boo boo!"

You probably mean "specific" purpose.

More to the point, this isn't new. We were doing this on web sites at least as far back as the early 2000's.

Re:macOS Big Sur by cshimmin on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:01PM (#25074976)
Uh, no GP's usage was fine. Take Collins dictionary: "If you refer to an express intention or purpose, you are emphasizing that it is a deliberate and specific one that you have before you do something".

Perhaps you are thinking of the term "express written consent", but there it's the word "written" that means it was, well, written.

Re:macOS Big Sur by minitech on Thursday November 12, 2020 @05:55PM (#25076362)
Yeah, I guess if you insert the incorrect [ed], it becomes incorrect.
Re:macOS Big Sur by spurgu on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:57PM (#25075649)
Or NextDNS.io if you trust them. I do and it's super convenient, both on desktop and mobile.
Re:macOS Big Sur by lstamour on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:39PM (#25073147)
It now supports WebExtensions like Firefox: https://www.wwdcnotes.com/notes/wwdc20/10665/

That said, it prefers its existing adblock implementation over extensions that block network requests manually, as that functionality is disabled, I think? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/saf...

Note also that the existing Safari adblock implementation is not subject to the hard limit of 30,000 rules that Chrome had announced in their V3 manifest format, as you can enable more rule sets to get around length limits. And now, on macOS Safari, you can add companion extensions that could monitor and modify the page after the fact if you need additional scripts to run, but at the cost of privacy and battery life...

I personally use AdGuard, 1Blocker and (my favourite) Small Technology Foundation’s Better Blocker (formerly Ind.ie). I use all three of them (but without any companion extensions, for privacy) on both iOS and macOS and rarely see any ads except the occasional static image that sometimes slips through. edit: I reported the ads I did see and they’re gone now from the sites that had them. So yes, I see no current limitations with Apple’s adblocking system except that it doesn’t apply to other apps, just Safari or other apps using Safari.

Re:macOS Big Sur by saagarjha on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:07PM (#25073560)
WebKit has a 50K rule limit per extension.
Re:macOS Big Sur by least on Thursday November 12, 2020 @03:21PM (#25074405)
AdGuard gets around this by running a different “extension” for different lists.
Re:macOS Big Sur by saagarjha on Thursday November 12, 2020 @03:26PM (#25074466)
It's not a great workaround because then your exclusion rules don't work across lists.
Re:macOS Big Sur by hombre_fatal on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:54PM (#25075614)
Well, the workaround is to append them to all lists. Which has the downside of requiring recompilation of all lists which might take a couple seconds on a slower device, but it certainly works. I do it for my personal adblocker.
Re:macOS Big Sur by cactus2093 on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:43PM (#25073212)
Honestly I've been finding ad blockers much less useful over time. Seems like every page I visit these days blocks the content until I disable it, if it's not an outright paywall. I think I spend more time disabling my ad blocker temporarily than I save by not loading ads in the first place.

Do others find that ad blockers actually still work well?

Meanwhile, reader mode in Safari will generally hide every ad on the page. It doesn't help with the privacy or battery life or security benefits that ad blockers provide, but in terms of just the user experience, at this point at least for me it's far superior to using an ad blocker. So I've been using safari more and more just for this.

Edit: Why am I getting downvoted? I don't think I'm violating any guidelines or saying anything inflammatory here, just curious about other people's experiences using ad blockers.

Re:macOS Big Sur by ballenf on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:37PM (#25073924)
The downvotes are maybe because you replied to a question of “is xyz still broken?” with “you don’t really need xyz.”

For me it was kind of an annoying place to make that point.

Many people use of ad block really more to protect from the surveillance aspects of ads than their aesthetics. Ads on big sites don’t really look terrible.

Re:macOS Big Sur by cactus2093 on Friday November 13, 2020 @11:43AM (#25084076)
Well, appreciate the explanation at least. I thought I was saying "even if xyz is still broken, I find abc to be a better solution anyway".

Guess my views are too radical for this crowd though.

Re:macOS Big Sur by hombre_fatal on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:57PM (#25075651)
I also find generalizations from such unlikely scenarios a bit annoying. You (poster above) have to consistently visit the worst sites on the internet, and so many that whitelisting doesnt suit you, to conclude the adblocking isn’t useful.

If that really describes what you do online, then you need some self-awareness over how little you have in common with everyone else and then temper your epiphanies accordingly.

Re:macOS Big Sur by irrational on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:53PM (#25073361)
I almost exclusively see that on News websites, but I don't visit those very often, so for the most part this doesn't affect me.
Re:macOS Big Sur by dsissitka on Thursday November 12, 2020 @04:11PM (#25075108)
> Honestly I've been finding ad blockers much less useful over time. Seems like every page I visit these days blocks the content until I disable it, if it's not an outright paywall. I think I spend more time disabling my ad blocker temporarily than I save by not loading ads in the first place.

Good ad blockers have a solution for this. For example, with uBlock Origin you enable an "annoyance" list.

Re:macOS Big Sur by circularfoyers on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:34PM (#25073899)
Can you mention some websites that you can't view with uBlock Origin? I haven't seen any and I've been using it for as long as I can remember. Do you also have the Unbreak and Annoyances filter lists enabled?