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Comment by ub99 | Hacker News Reader

I use AdGuard pro on an iPhone and generally don’t see any ads at all in Safari. I believe this app will block ads in any iOS browser.

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I'd like to switch to iPhone, but the lack of real Firefox + uBO is what keeps me from doing it. It's good to know there are some options there, thanks for the pointer.

If ad blocking is all you’re looking for, I can’t remember the last time I saw an ad in Safari iOS with Firefox focus content blocker, or Wipr content blocker.

I don’t notice any difference between Firefox or Chrome + ublock origin and Safari + Wipr/Firefox Focus.

I was much like you but I can say that AdGuard for Safari on iOS is pretty decent. Sure it isn't as flexible as Firefox+uBO on Android but it does a fine job at blocking ads and doesn't require any tweaking.

The biggest benefit is that as every web view on iOS is Safari it means you get content blocking in all apps that use a web view (providing they don't disable it which I'm sure some do but I don't know of any that actually do it). E.g. in the third-party reddit app Apollo any website you load within the app also has all ads blocked.

I paid for full version of AdGuard Pro late last year after my 6 month Android/Oneplus phase ended and I went back to iOS. It has worked REAL well and allows me to just use native Safari. I'm happy with this setup. I used to use free Firefox Focus as the content blocker before, but it would go long time between updates.

The only annoyance with Adguard Pro on iOS (and probably the same for all app based content blockers on iOS) is it is clunky to whitelist a site as they aren't integrated with the browser. You have to open the app itself, dig into the whitelist area and then manually type in/paste the domain name to add it. Brave and FF Focus you can do it right from within the browser, same as it was with FF/ubo on Android.

Also, AdGuard on iOS doesn't acknowledge specific pages only within a domain. For example; mlb.com is loaded with ads, their highlight videos show a 15 sec ad for literally every highlight. I have AdGuard enabled and the experience is so much better. BUT the "Standings" page doesn't load with AdGuard enabled and I can't just disable it only for that page.

Regardless, the small price to pay for AdGuard on iOS is well worth it.

AFAIK, ads can only be blocked in Safari on iOS. I have Adguard on my iPhone, but it only works in Safari – not Firefox, which is the browser I use. So that's very annoying.

There are DNS blockers for iOS, which block most ads, including in-app ads. Just need to find the right list.

Edge browser on iOS has an option to make use of content blockers in the same way that Safari does. Last I checked Chrome doesn’t.

I’m surprised to hear that Firefox doesn’t have the option to do so.

I don’t know if it’s just muscle memory, but Safari on iOS is still my browser of choice due to the way you open and close tabs in it.

Firefox has an additional app called Firefox Focus which installs a content blocker for both Safari and Firefox.

Also for Safari, Magic Lasso AdBlocker does a very good job.

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