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Comment by nickysielicki | Hacker News Reader

I like this phrasing a lot. It’s easy to feel that iOS isn’t on your side when you can’t use a non-WebKit browser and can’t use an adblocker.

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> It’s easy to feel that iOS isn’t on your side when you can’t use a non-WebKit browser and can’t use an adblocker.

Not only does Safari allow for 3rd-party adblock extensions that are pretty good, there are iOS browsers available, like iCab Mobile[0] for instance, that allow for extremely fine-grained, granular and tweakable ad-blocking, filtering, domain-blocking, and CSS and javascript rules - all of which can be user-edited and refined to fit exactly the user's own requirements.

There are always so many comments like the above in these threads: often characterized by people banging on iOS because it "can't be customized the way I want it after I paid so much for my iPhone". But these seem to be just standard consumer-mindset complaining from users that don't even have the intellectual curiosity to investigate whether there's actually anything already available that solves their imagined problem, or even try to fix it themselves - just as the article says.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/icab-mobile-web-browser/id3081...

The 3rd-party adblock extensions only work within Safari.

> The 3rd-party adblock extensions only work within Safari.

Did you read my entire comment?

Can you see that there are entire browser apps that implement really granular and user-controllable ad-blocking.

In other words exactly the thing the poster I was responding to is complaining about.

You still can't use a non webkit browser though. It's Internet Explorer levels of non-competition. I would love to be able to say to my users, when they experience an issue with Safari - "you can try a different browser". But I can't because the same issue will be present in Chrome.

But that's what you a developer want, not necessarily the users. I'm extremely happy that you can't tell me to use another browser and have to fix your code for Safari instead. I think that you have a right to decide which browser I can use, even if I'm your costumer. I knew the rules when I bought my iPhone and had to accept them, even if it means only using webkit. Being forced to switch to Chrome when using a specific website just because the developer didn't feel like making it work in Safari is very annoying on the Mac and would make me go nut on the phone.

It's not "fix my code" when Safari doesn't even support the feature or it's simply broken - or most annoyingly, it works one day and breaks with an update. (See: webrtc stuff) You might have known the rules, but most users don't. Plenty will come to me saying they've tried both Safari and Chrome and that it won't work in either, indicating they have no knowledge of webkit.

Android also randomly breaks things now and then, but I can at least direct users to Firefox, which never seems to have any problems.

Please understand redirecting users to another browser is only ever a last resort. If I can fix the code I will, but sometimes something just stops working and I can't even reproduce it.

...and I have a teacher who is relying on my app for their classes this week and "try firefox" could save them...

Not that this fundamentally changes your claim, but it's probably worth pointing out to someone reading that you can use an ad blocker on iOS.

There exist adblockers but as far as I’m aware they all work at a network level and not at a script level, which means that 1. They suck and 2. You can’t use a VPN and an adblocker at the same time.

(Am I misinformed?)

It’s the other way round actually. On iOS you can install an adblock ruleset provider that Safari can use natively. On Android it’s only VPN or an adblock-enabled browser (that is usually yet another set of issues) because Chrome is adblock’s enemy. At least that’s my experience after long research while using both OS (recently, mid '20-21).

You can do DNS based adblocking on Android as well using the built in "private DNS" support in combination with something like NextDNS. Doesnt need a VPN or special browser.

Properly configured, you can get much better adblocking capabilities on an Android phone than you can on iOS.

There's a weird situation with mobile phones where for most people who aren't going to go out of their way to make their devices private, Apple's ecosystem is the right choice; it has better defaults and better sandboxing. But once you do decide to go out of your way to make your device private, Apple's ecosystem stops being the right choice.

On a rooted Android phone I have network-level adblocking on my device that directly works with the firewall. I also run Ublock Origin in my phone browser, which blows every single Safari adblocker out of the water. I can also cut off Internet access to specific apps and games, not just to domains. I also have access to a litany of Open Source apps that wouldn't be allowed on app stores like NewPipe that improve my privacy by replacing services. And LineageOS imposes additional sandboxing on top of Android's built-in features.

But if a friend buys a phone, they're not going to do any of that. They can't get NewPipe because they're not using F-Droid. They're probably going to stick with Chrome, which has next to no adblocking or extra privacy controls. An iPhone will be more private and more secure for them in almost every way.

So it's a weird situation where which device is more private depends a lot on who you are. For most average consumers, it's likely iOS. But it's not quite so simple to say that iOS has the best privacy overall.

For network level blocking on Android there's no need to root or go down any rabbit holes. Just set your DNS to a adblocking service like nextdns. It's natively available since Android 9 and there are workarounds for older versions (usually by using an app that pretends to be a VPN).

I don't know about Chrome adblocking because I'm using Firefox on all my Android devices. I installed uBlock Origin and I'm using it to block elements with CSS rules (lots of annoying sticky headers and useless navigation bars.) Sometimes I use it to block scripts. My primary adblocker is Blockada which is a local VPN and blocks all ads in all apps. This means that usually no ads make their way to Firefox and I remove their empty spaces from pages with uBlock.

The shortcoming of using Blockada is that I can't use another VPN. I don't really need it yet, but if I would that could be a big problem.

I don't know why Google doesn't allow chaining VPNs. Maybe the UX would be too difficult on a phone, maybe it's a real edge case not worth spending money on, maybe it would be used only to block ads.

If you want both: a blokada-like adblocker and a VPN, setting one up with Algo and WireGuard is quite easy. I've been using it for ages and it just works without me needing to interfere.

https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

They kind of suck because of the reasons you mention but you can absolutely use them with a VPN and I do think they've gotten better over the past six years or so that I've used them.

Yeah - content blocking has been supported by safari for several years now.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

> (Am I misinformed?)

Quick appreciation regarding the intellectual humility required to add this to the end of your comment. In my humble opinion, this kind of attitude and approach represents some of the best of the HN community.

It's true that Safari content blocking is rules-based, but its not on a network level, the logic is implemented in the WebKit renderer. So in addition to blocking URL patterns, it is also possible to make rules to hide specific elements by CSS selector.

And the architecture of it guarantees that the content blocker doesn’t turn rogue on you and start siphoning your browsing data overnight.

Plus it applies to Safari View Controller for in-app browsing.

https://www.imore.com/ios-9-content-blocking-extensions-expl...

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