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uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

apps.apple.com

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Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#111

Post by lapcat »

tomalpha wrote: post #23

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…

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.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#113

Post by darrenf »

karel-3d wrote: post #67
lapcat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

[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  .
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.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#114

Post by mary-ext »

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.

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.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#116

Post by mbirth »

pdpi wrote: post #49
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…

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.

Wipr 2. One time payment for macOS and mobile. And it even blocks ads on YouTube (when watched via Safari).

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#117

Post by tim333 »

mathgeek wrote: post #79
cedws wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah I think they’re just bad at search, macOS Spotlight search has to be the most slow janky search I have ever used.

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.

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.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#118

Post by isodev »

antihero wrote: post #62
isodev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#119

Post by nemomarx »

jncfhnb wrote: post #97
zelphirkalt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 star…

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.

What's the entity in question for KDE search?

Re: uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari

#120

Post by al_borland »

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?

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.
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