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Comment by NowhereMan | Hacker News Reader

I've been using the eye dropper a lot lately. It's great for making websites usable. It even works on mobile for disabling hostile ux elements such as "xyz is better with the app" nags.

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Yeah, the new Wikia/Fandom design finally drove me to start taking very liberal usage of custom rules

I must’ve purged over 50% of visual elements from Fandom wikis with my uBlock filters. It’s outrageous how much garbage is served. I wonder what their UX design meetings look like.

I just browsed Memory Alpha with filters off. Wow. I had no idea it had gotten so bad.

I so miss pre-Wikia Memory Alpha...

A site:reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/ search with a plugin to redirect www. to old. if you're not logged in can replicate a lot of what Memory Alpha has from all the discussion. At least until Reddit finishes alienating everyone interested in weird niche discussion in favor of clickbait.

Even for areas where there is a community wiki (e.g. uesp, combineoverwiki), Google seems to prefer the Wikia/Fandom version with all the crap on the pages.

And a lot of those community wikis that originally set up not on Wikia intentionally, like minecraft, terraria and wowpedia wikis, ended up on Gamepedia which Wikia took over and reeled them back in.

I imagine lots of alcohol.

There are no UI, UX, or devs present, just marketing execs.

For me it's the element rules. Being able to hide every post that contains "____ liked this" on LinkedIn/FB actually makes them tolerable.

I recently did it to hide the social aspects on the GitHub homepage... no explore sidebar, no reactions in the main feed.

Similarly, disabling the social features on SO was very useful. The "Hot network questions" block to the side is needlessly distracting and adds 0 value.

I never realized what this feature did. Thank you! (And thank you to the developers)

Well, the icons are just terrible, utterly insipid and lacking in power. It needs labels rather than icons, and better names for “zapper” and “picker” too (something like “remove elements from this page” versus “block elements from this site”).

I’m not sure if browsers apply height limits to these popups, but if not, almost every time there will be oodles of space for full labels and replacing the two single rows of buttons with columns. And even if scrolling is introduced, that’d still be better.

> It needs labels rather than icons

At least they now have tooltips - I remember when choosing "Advanced mode" (which you need for a lot of features) just disabled tooltips in the UI, on the theory that advanced users shouldn't need them! I (and likely many others) argued how crazy an assumption that was, that just because we understood how HTML and JS worked, we should remember a bunch of icons and what the dev decided they meant. Thankfully they were willing to listen and change the decision, and the UI is a lot better for it.

If you have some pull here, it would be really nice to have popups added to the grid in the middle of the dropdown where the colored boxes are. I use these very rarely and can never remember which column of colored boxes do what.

The top row of those have tooltips too. I can never remember either, and have to check them every time.

This is one of the best hidden features of uBlock. While we're on the topic, how does one effectively block facebook ads?

I've got simple rules to chop the ads from LinkedIn, but if you do an inspect on FB, they've been very sneaky about how the elements are set up, eg it doesn't just say "Sponsored" in a string, it's a weird mash that ends up looking like that when rendered but hard to nail down.

Then again I'm more of a backend dev, so maybe that's why I don't know what to do.

> weird mash that ends up looking like that when rendered but hard to nail down.

It is designed to be very hard to select automatically. It is also why I don't use Facebook more than 5 minutes a week - it is among the only services where ads annoy me.

FB Purity seems to do a good job: https://www.fbpurity.com

Doesn't remove sponsored posts for me.

I found this on their FAQ page: https://www.fbpurity.com/faq.htm

> *Important News*: 4th September 2021: Sponsored Posts Issue: It seems Facebook have just changed their code for Sponsored Posts, so some people have started seeing Sponsored Posts in their Newsfeed again, I am working on fixing this, please be patient, thanks! *UPDATE* It seems for some people the sponsored posts are only getting through if your Newsfeed is set to "Top Posts", if you switch to "Most Recent", the Sponsored Posts should in theory disappear. The good news is that FBP has an option to keep you permanently on the "Most Recent" feed when you visit the Newsfeed, so that could possibly solve the issue for now, give it a try and let me know if that solves it for you. In the meantime, I will continue working on a more robust fix.

I don't see a "Most Recent" setting?

Open the FBP options screem by clicking the "FBP" button in the navigation bar at the top of the page.

Under the "Further options" heading there is a setting titled "News Sort: Most Recent". Tick that option, then click the "Save and Close" button.

As mentioned above this is not guaranteed to fix hiding the sponsored posts, but a lot of people are reporting success with it, as Facebook seem to pepper the "Top Posts" version of the Newsfeed with more ads than the "Most Recent" version, and "Top Posts" is Facebook's default setting for the Newsfeed.

This has been working for me for a while, though it seems lots of people get different html so it may not work for you:

  facebook.com##div[data-pagelet*="FeedUnit"]:has(div[aria-label="Sponsored"])
  facebook.com##div[data-pagelet*="FeedUnit"]:has(span[aria-label="Sponsored"])
  facebook.com##div[data-pagelet*="FeedUnit"]:has(a[aria-label="Sponsored"])
  facebook.com##div[data-pagelet*="FeedUnit"]:has-text(Suggested for You)

This has the strange effect of removing every item in the feed, causing it to flash while waiting for a refresh, forever. Skeleton -> flash of new item -> skeleton -> etc

The eye dropper is also quite useful for writing userscripts and userstyles directly on Android; I tap the element, hit preview to see what happens (margins, padding, border collapse, etc), type a note at the end of the element name and sirens it to the clipboard, then move on. Back in the editor, I just paste my notes from the clipboard, and I can quickly write up a stylesheet override for a dynamic webpage without resorting to debugging on my desktop.

I don't understand why Firefox mobile can't be used to debug another Firefox mobile, I I'd love it if I could open devtools off to the side and see a live tree view instead of manually prefixing the URL with `view-source:` only to find out the html doesn't actually include any content.

This feature is so good but so confusing to use, really the best thing about ublock beyond the ad-blocking. I use very extensively, I almost wish it was a standalone tool, so that the filtering aspects could be shared more easily.

Are you on Android? I keep hearing FireFox and extensions like uBlock work on mobile, but it doesn't seam to be the case on iOS.

I believe that's because all browsers on iOS are essentially safari wrappers

So the content blocker that you can use is those which relies on Safari's blocking.

For some reason, Content Blockers on iOS only work on Safari. Other browsers on iOS are not allowed or able to implement them.

uBlock Origin is also more fully featured than Content Blockers, which don't have the on-demand whitelisting features and toggles. However, since uBlock Origin is only available as a browser extension, it can only be used with a browser that supports extensions. No browser on iOS is able to support uBlock Origin.

Safari 13+ on macOS also no longer supports uBlock Origin due to platform restrictions: https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158

Firefox Focus on iOS blocks 78% with all tracker blocks are enabled, and 62% with the last “Block other content trackers” option disabled. Percentage figures are from test on https://d3ward.github.io/toolz/adblock.html.

Firefox Focus is a nice browser for certain use cases, but it can't compare to uBlock Origin, which scores 100% on that test for me on a fresh install with default settings (using Firefox on Android and desktop).

It's interesting how Firefox Focus on iOS also acts as a Content Blocker for Safari, but I find AdGuard to be more comprehensive on iOS.

Increasing YouTube ad display rates on mobile drove me to using the (somewhat clunky) AdGuard share button in safari that blocks ads when using YT in Safari. I’m just glad there is some option on iOS.

It is funny that Android has better adblock features (uBO on Firefox).

Android also has Newpipe, which is the absolute best ad-free yt experience. It's one of the reasons I could not live with iOS.

SkyTube is also an excellent, open source YouTube client for android.

I was replying specifically to the first paragraph in the parent comment that other apps on iOS are not able to implement content blockers. Firefox Focus does appear to do just that. Obviously, not as effectively as uBlock Origin (thanks for testing!) but uBO isn’t yet available to install on Firefox on iOS.

(Edit since I can’t reply): Firefox Focus does appear to implement iOS content blocker since it appears as an option under Safari settings for content blockers.

Oh, I was using "Content Blockers" to refer to apps that implement Apple's Content Blocker API: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

Firefox (standard and Focus) and other iOS browsers can block ads and trackers, but not as comprehensively as that API can. That API is limited to Safari due to platform restrictions, which I hope get removed in the future.

(And now I can reply, lol)

Firefox Focus appears under Safari settings > content blockers, along with more typical blockers like AdGuard. I think they both implement Content Blocker API.

The way Firefox Focus is implemented on iOS is a little complicated, since it's both a browser and a Content Blocker. As of 2017, Firefox Focus uses WKWebView as the webview component: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-ios/pull/507

WKWebView does not support the Content Blocker API. Ad blocking apps that use the Content Blocker API are only compatible with Safari and the SFSafariViewController component, which is very feature-limited and not suitable for a full web browser app:

- https://www.wwdcnotes.com/notes/wwdc20/10188/

- https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=trjs0tcd

As a workaround, Firefox Focus uses script injection to block ads and trackers within the browser part of itself, but the Content Blocker part of Firefox Focus only affects Safari:

- https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-ios/blob/main/Blockz...

- https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-ios/issues/1761

However, both Firefox Focus and Safari (with the Firefox Focus Content Blocker enabled) score 78% on that test, so Firefox Focus might be good enough for web browsing on iOS if you're comfortable with its feature set and don't need the additional filter lists or custom rules that another third-party Content Blocker would offer.

Apple should still allow third-party browsers to use third-party Content Blockers, since this restriction is an unnecessary handicap for any non-Safari browser on iOS.

I think that means Safari can use Firefox Focus as content blocker. Not the other way around.

Sure you can compare them. It’s 78/100 effective on that test.

And unfortunately, on iOS the alternative isn’t ublock origin.

Hmm, you're right. AdGuard on Safari also scores 78% on iOS. I guess that's as good as it gets on that platform.

The Brave browser on iOS gets around 90% interestingly.

Vanilla Safari on iOS 15 beta with tracking prevention activated gets 98% - not bad!

Brave on iOS only scores 77% for me with the default settings, which includes the "Block cross-site trackers" Shield setting. Do you have some other setting enabled?

Hm, ok - maybe it's because I'm also using Pi-hole in my network.

One rather effective way to get much higher (approx 99%) on iOS is to use a DNS over HTTPS provisioning profile (or app), and use a DNS server that blocks ads.

If you run your own server, you can get to 100% by turning on blocking for a couple of hosts not in standard blocklists that this test has highlighted.

The DNS setting applies to most or all apps, as far as I can see, as it's applied as a system level provisioning setting. iOS 15 gives more visibility of this in the UI, but it works in iOS 14.

Brave gets a 100% there. Interesting, I thought it was not as good.

On ios you have to use Firefox Focus. But it doesn't do as good a job as Firefox + uBlock Origin.

How do I use it on mobile? I can't find the download link for android.

Yandex Browser on Android [which is based on Chrome] supports Chrome extensions. I'm running it with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and a few others. If an extension won't load directly from the Chrome Webstore you can toggle 'Developer Mode' under 'chrome://extensions' and load the downloaded and unpacked CRX directly.

Kiwi Browser also allows to install Chrome extensions. I keep it as an alternative browser with uBlock and other useful extensions.

Also, Vivaldi has a fairly complete adblocker built-in, with custom filter lists and also scores a solid 100% on that test.

I had high hopes for Kiwi Browser but, unfortunately its text-reflow feature has been broken since forever. Yandex Browser is the only one available on Android that ticks both those 'must have' boxes for me: full support for extensions and a functional text-reflow feature --without which a huge swathe of the web is unreadable for me, due to microscopic text sizes.

I know other browsers have their own built-in ad-blockers, but I prefer to use uBlock Origin across all my devices so, when I setup a new one, I can just import my existing rules & settings, built up and tweaked over many years, rather than start from scratch.

For what browser? If Chrome, then you're out of luck: mobile Chrome doesn't support extensions. If Firefox, then just open the menu and go to Add-ons.

Install Firefox from the Play Store. Then open this link in Firefox and install the supported extensions - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?promoted=re...

It also blocks the paywall in some webs that aren't too well designed (the content is loaded under a frame that hide it). It's great to have such a good tool.

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