UBlock Origin for Safari | Hacker News Reader

UBlock Origin for Safari

github.com

243 pointsbijection64 comments

Yes! Been waiting for a uBlock Origin for Safari for a while.

I looked into Ellis Tsung, the listed dev, but can't find much about him. The LinkedIn profile most likely (IMO) to be his only has 35 contacts and I've never heard of his other projects listed on his personal webpage. Throwing this out here in case somebody as something to add.

The most important aspect one should look for in an app (/extension) before installation is whether or not the dev is sufficiently trustworthy. Not yet sure about this individual.

Also, if we're making wish lists, somebody please look into uMatrix for Safari!

I dunno. If the source is available and has enough eyeballs, then trust in the author is still important but less so than someone providing binaries based on closed sources. As I feel Microsoft has taken a long time to learn.

What does Microsoft have to do with anything?

Well, they created an unauditable mess of an operating system with numerous security vulnerabilities while using their monopolistic hold on the PC market to hold back better solutions.

I disagree with GP's point about "enough eyeballs". Heartbleed et al showed us that bugs can lie in plain sight for years.

No, not really. Once I install the extension, unless I do something unusual, I've signed up to automatically download and run whatever code is signed with the right key and put in the update channel. If the dev isn't trustworthy, I'm almost certainly going to be hosed before I know I have a problem. Being able to see exactly how I got hosed, after the fact, is somewhat cold comfort.

Indeed - and extensions get sold all the time for fast cash.

That's a good news!

Aren't safari extensions vetted before they can be hosted by apple? I am asking because the page mentions it will be available on safari extension store eventually. Will that still be a problem?

Safari still accepts packaged extensions not hosted by Apple but typically requires them to be signed. I think the concern here is only partially whether this person is doing something malicious - that seems quite unlikely.

uBlock's author previously gave control of the uBlock project to someone who worked on the Safari port and this person turned out to be a (young, but I guess you can start anytime) sleazebag. uBlock's author ended up renaming his project uBlock Origin end eventually stopped contributing/backporting his work into the Safari port. The Safari port essentially died.

It's great that someone is picking this up again and wary and hopeful users are looking for some indication this seemingly awesome person is not a sleazebag.

This is fantastic news, especially if this fork is well maintained and/or gets merged upstream. Safari has the lightest battery usage and fastest speed by far of any browser on my Macbook, but it sucks that the best extensions aren't always available.

>or gets merged upstream

I don't understand what that means. Do you mean that it will be updated automatically on your Safari once you download it initially?

By merging it upstream, I would be updated by the creator of uBlock Origin, instead of updates coming from someone else.

This repo is a fork of gorhill/uBlock. Merging it upstream means merging the changes in this fork back to gorhill/uBlock so that majority of the UO community can enjoy the Safari compatibility of UO and this fork's user base can enjoy bugfixes from the gorhill/uBlock. And as users of ad blockers, we don't end up with 2 similar but slightly different softwares.

Ideally, this fork should be merged back as a PR to the original repo instead of advertising it as-is.

There's a [dead] comment replying to this that seems like a perfectly reasonable, non-inflammatory question. What's going on?

Likely a banned account. If you think it's worthwhile, you can click "vouch" to reanimate it, as it were.

Yup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12869685

I read this yesterday and fired up Safari for the first time. Once I got uBlock installed and my settings the way I wanted, the experience was fine, except one thing. There seems to be a tiny delay when I tap-to-click on the trackpad (2012 MBP). Does anyone else get that? It's the only problem I have with Safari, but it'll almost annoying enough to drive me back to Chrome.

I've been using uBlock on Safari for quite a while now (I've got 0.9.5.2 version installed atm). I cannot find any info what is the difference between uBlock and the uBlock Origin, can anyone elaborate on this? Is the difference like between Adblock and Adblock Plus?

Long story short - uBlock Origin is a fork by the original developer who worked on uBlock.

In addition, the uBlock Safari port has been dead for some time.

Not that that's stopped the ex-maintainer from soliciting donations for it.

In addition to what madeofpalk writes, the uBlock Origin manifesto gives some context:

https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/blob/safari/MANIFESTO....

>The uBlock project does not support Adblock Plus' "Acceptable Ads Manifesto", because the "Acceptable Ads" marketing campaign is really the business plan of a for-profit entity.

But is it better than using extensions like Wipr that used the built-in ad-blocking system?

Well, this is what the developer of the JS Blocker extension for Safari has to say about it¹:

“Safari has a new feature called "Content Blockers" that allows for extremely efficient resource blocking on both the desktop and iOS version of Safari. As much as I'd like to incorporate this into JS Blocker, it is not feasible to do so. Using a content blocker will prevent JS Blocker from showing you exactly what's going on on a website (i.e. you won't see what's allowed or blocked.) It'll also break all of JS Blocker's "other" features, such as showing alerts within the webpage and canvas fingerprinting protection. Besides the loss of features, content blockers are limited to 50,000 rules. While this seems like a high number, it isn't enough for efficient protection and a lot of rules would need to be cut out to even run a content blocker. Until Apple eases the restrictions (or at least raises the number of rules that can be in a content blocker), JS Blocker will not be using this API.”

――――――

¹ — http://jsblocker.toggleable.com/

The whole point of the content blocking API is to protect the users privacy. Without it, the plugin gets to see every single web page you visit, and its contents, and could do anything with that information.

I've been using 1Blocker which, while not free, uses the API and seems to work very well. (And can sync your block settings with the iOS.)

It works very well indeed!

Agreed. Content blockers are also not executing js code for every resource the page tries to load: it's just the defined blocking rules that get processed.

I'm also using 1blocker. Lacking an existing site (or time to build one myself) for sharing 1blocker packages, I've started storing them here: https://bitbucket.org/stephenreay/1blocker-packages

If you're doing this with a huge number of manually maintained rules which depend on the specifics of the ad code, you're doomed to endlessly updating signatures. That's labor-intensive. It's more effective to blacklist the ad domains and then try to infer the boundaries of the ad by looking at the DOM. That's how I did it in Ad Limiter, which filters Google search results. Google changes their ad code all the time, but Ad Limiter seldom needs to be changed.

It doesn't block youtube ads.

Hmm, what does?

Ironically enough, the original ublock does on safari.

My understanding is that this doesn't use the newish Safari content block API, am I right?

What's the best ad blocker that uses the Safari content block API? I use Adguard, and it's ok, but I'd want something else.

Paying money is no problem.

1Blocker is pretty well regarded right now, that's what I use.

Thanks. I tried it, but it doesn't block youtube banners on the bottom of the videos. Adguard does. It also blocks all comments, including Hacker News comments by default??!?

Comments are a toggle as a class, or a toggle per CSS markup; or whitelist HN.

I'm complaining about a bizarre default (also blocks porn by default), not that I don't know how to fix it. That being said, the lack of blocking youtube in-video banner advertisements make it unusable to me, which is a pity because the UI is pretty good.

HN comments were specifically mentioned as a fix for the latest beta via TestFlight.

The 1Blocker beta (via TestFlight) mentions blocking YouTube banner ads now. I haven't tested it yet for that.

I use wipr and it's excellent.

I've been using it for a year and haven't seen any ads so far, not even video ads from big or small websites.

The macOS version is free so you can test it. The iOS version is $1 and it's very worth it.

Unfortunately wipr doesn't have any settings (whitelists, extra filters, etc) on macOS.

Just tried it but it got stuck on www.bbcamerica.com trying to play a video because it doesn't know how to handle a missing google analytics. On the other hand, ublock0 handled it properly.

I use Ka-Block! and am satisfied with it.

I've tried all ad blockers from Safari extensions gallery - Adguard is the clear winner. Most powerful and customisable, yet uses Safari content block API.

Very nice. Just tried it on (www.bbcamerica.com) and it works as oppose to the regular ublock that removes google analytics and don't know how to handle getting stuck. Will definitely test it out more and report any bugs.

> and it works as oppose to the regular ublock that removes google analytics and don't know how to handle getting stuck.

Is this a matter of something changed in the extension itself, or is it a difference in what filters they subscribe to by default?

Far too much discussion of adblockers ignores that the third-party filters are not the same as the browser extension. Filter subscriptions are mostly interchangeable between the various AdBlock derivatives and replacements, and it's also quite possible to use them with only filters you create yourself.

Also, it sounds like the Google Analytics problem you're referring to is what NoScript's surrogate scripts feature is for.

> Is this a matter of something changed in the extension itself

Probably related to the `redirect` filter option, introduced in uBO 1.4.0[1].

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/1.4.0

Is there content blocker for iOS that supports custom filters?

Quite a few. 1Blocker is one of them:

https://1blocker.com

And you'll need custom lists for 1Blocker because it exempts some ad networks by default.

Which one do you recommend then ?

Is Firefox Focus better ?

Firefox Focus only blocks tracking, not ads.

It exempts them on purpose or just happens not to include them? Which networks?

The Deck isn't blocked by default, but the author provides a package you can easily download to block them as well.

They, being 1Blocker, have posted about this before. It's felt that The Deck is non-intrusive and therefore not something that needs blocking.

Can you elaborate?

Does not seem to work with standard adblock/ublock lists.

Great! Will this come to iOS soon?

I'm going to HN[0] you and say just use AdBlock on iOS. Works great!

[0] When someone ask for one thing and someone tells you to use another without addressing the actual question.

Is this a unofficial fork? Why is it not included with the main uBlock project?

Short version: Author of uBlock Origin is original author of uBlock and decided to hand it off. Drama ensued and original author decided to fork what had previously been his own project and continue.

See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38

If that was a response to the comment someone recently posted asking for it to be ported to Safari than bravo for the quick response!

Microsoft Edge next please?

I started looking for how to develop plugins for Edge to port it, but could not find any resources from Microsoft which is pretty strange.

They simply state "Microsoft Edge supports a new HTML, JavaScript and CSS based extension model. This new model is Chrome-compatible which means that existing Chrome extension developers will be able to migrate their extensions to Microsoft Edge with minimal changes." but not how to actually add the extension or anything to get going.

Yeah, it looks like four now they're only doing joint official extensions. Basically you gotta work with someone at Microsoft to have your extension added to the store. Otherwise you can create a regular chrome extension and side load it, and it works like 75% of the time.

https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge/releases

Been using this for a few months. Seems to work well aside from having to turn it on manually every time I restart Edge

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