Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

apps.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 464 posts

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#61

Post by lapcat »

shawnz wrote: post #31
frou_dh wrote: post #9

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.

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.

> 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.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#62

Post by antihero »

isodev wrote: post #58
cm2187 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Update your iphone and it will work

The whole point of going iPhone is not to have to deal with these kinds of situations.

The whole point of using an iPhone is that you don't have to update it?

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#63

Post by lapcat »

ErneX wrote: post #53
MortyWaves wrote: post #44

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…

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.

This is a bit misleading. Safari content blockers have been available on iOS since 2015. In 2021, JavaScript-based Safari web extensions were added.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#66

Post by jraph »

ron_k wrote: post #40
thijsvandien wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#67

Post by karel-3d »

lapcat wrote: post #63
ErneX wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a bit misleading. Safari content blockers have been available on iOS since 2015. In 2021, JavaScript-based Safari web extensions were added.

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

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#69

Post by drukenemo »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #38

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?

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.
Post reply on HN