uBlock Origin 1.41
github.com
github.com
Every time I use the "YouTube" app on my elderly relatives TV and see how often it is interrupted with adverts I count my blessings that this add-on exists.
Apart from SponsorBlock in YT, the most useful thing I've found is the Hyperion sender app. I'm really looking forward to building my DIY Ambilight when the pieces arrive, and it's really nice to automatically capture all output, instead of capturing through HDMI.
Not that I'd want it actively connecting to the Internet either way, but if I could run something more stripped-down than an OEM stock image it would... almost make a smart TV attractive?
there are websites out there that even after paying their subscription they still put up ads.
I was referring to a hashtag or simply a tag a piece of text that can be spotted and then that type of content skipped.
YouTube adds an overlay* in the upper left corner which says "Includes paid promotion". The overlay leads to https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10588440
Also creator added "#sponosred" hashtag.
Both "Includes paid promotion" overlay* and "#sponsored" hashtag can be detected and therefore the video could've been skipped or hidden by some extension or by uBlock Origin filter. You can either rely on detecting aforementioned Google overlay* or sponsored hashtag.
*HTML code of "Includes paid promotion" overlay:
<div class="ytp-paid-content-overlay" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true" data-layer="4"><a class="ytp-paid-content-overlay-link" target="_blank" style="display: none;" href="https://support.google.com/youtube?p=ppp&nohelpkit=1"><d... class="ytp-paid-content-overlay-icon"><svg fill="none" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="100%"><path d="M6 9H5V5V4H6H19V5H6V9ZM21.72 16.04C21.56 16.8 21.15 17.5 20.55 18.05C20.47 18.13 18.42 20.01 14.03 20.01C13.85 20.01 13.67 20.01 13.48 20C11.3 19.92 8.51 19.23 5.4 18H2V10H5H6H7V6H21V13H16.72C16.37 13.59 15.74 14 15 14H12.7C13.01 14.46 13.56 15 14.5 15H15.02C16.07 15 17.1 14.64 17.92 13.98C18.82 13.26 20.03 13.22 20.91 13.84C21.58 14.32 21.9 15.19 21.72 16.04ZM15 10C15 9.45 14.55 9 14 9C13.45 9 13 9.45 13 10H15ZM20 11C19.45 11 19 11.45 19 12H20V11ZM19 7C19 7.55 19.45 8 20 8V7H19ZM8 8C8.55 8 9 7.55 9 7H8V8ZM8 10H12C12 8.9 12.9 8 14 8C15.1 8 16 8.9 16 10V10.28C16.59 10.63 17 11.26 17 12H18C18 10.9 18.9 10 20 10V9C18.9 9 18 8.1 18 7H10C10 8.1 9.1 9 8 9V10ZM5 13.5V11H3V17H5V13.5ZM20.33 14.66C19.81 14.29 19.1 14.31 18.6 14.71C17.55 15.56 16.29 16 15.02 16H14.5C12.62 16 11.67 14.46 11.43 13.64L11.24 13H15C15.55 13 16 12.55 16 12C16 11.45 15.55 11 15 11H6V13.5V17.16C8.9 18.29 11.5 18.93 13.52 19C17.85 19.15 19.85 17.34 19.87 17.32C20.33 16.9 20.62 16.4 20.74 15.84C20.84 15.37 20.68 14.91 20.33 14.66Z" fill="white"></path></svg></div><div class="ytp-paid-content-overlay-text">Includes paid promotion</div><div class="ytp-paid-content-overlay-chevron"><svg height="100%" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 32 32" width="100%"><path d="m 12.59,20.34 4.58,-4.59 -4.58,-4.59 1.41,-1.41 6,6 -6,6 z" fill="#fff"></path></svg></div></a></div>
It helps if you have a network perimeter firewall to block unauthorized DNS usage.
Sad reality is Google can make ad blockers obsolete if they really wanted to but I don't think it will happen anytime soon since antitrust lawsuit is pressuring them to ease aggressive business practices.
You can right click on individual things in a website's UI and make them go away using the "Block element ..." context menu command added by uBlock.
This is useful for not only getting rid of ads, but anything that distracts you or tricks you into clicking on it.
For instance, in Reddit, if you find yourself accidentally clicking on switching to New Reddit (which annoyingly updates your profile to make that choice stick), you can just block that button.
For a great many sites, I remove headers, footers, sidebars, etc.
I didn't manually block anything from these sites, but don't see any annoying block near the top.
Well, the main "stackexchange.com" has a dialog-box-like element titled "StackExchange Q&A Communities are Different. Here's how:", with a bunch of content, and a [Learn More] button. You can close this with the X in the top right corner. Is this it?
I guess it doesn't bother me because I've never found that site useful to begin with.
The dismissible block is not actually at the top; it's below the "search all sites" toolbar, and below that block there isn't any particularly useful content, just "hot questions" and a sidebar of "featured sites". Basically nothing other than that toolbar is useful, and that toolbar could just be a tiny browser extension or something. So if I dismiss that box, no useful content moves up to occupy that space. It could bother me a bit if I were interested in browsing the hot questions, rather than search.
Maybe DuckDuckGo has a shortcut for it? Hey, yes it does: !se
If you use DDG, you have no need to visit stackexchange.com just to search all the SE sites; just !se in front of your search terms.
The filters (custom rules for hiding stuff) is great for personalizing your browsing. Eliminate scores on Reddit, YouTube video cards containing keywords for stuff you don't want to get spoiled, Tweets types that don't interest you like "Stuff your follows such as "You might like", etc.
I blocked the loading spinner element and the website worked perfectly after that.
How many of you here instead spend your 40 hours a week making 6 digit salaries at a company that wants nothing more than to own the attention of everyone who connects to a network? How many of you have actively worked to create systems and technology to invade the screens and speakers of users who wanted nothing of the sort? How many of you have sat in meetings about "attribution" or "analytics" and lied to yourself about what you were building and what it would do to millions of people?
Back when uB was transferred to a different maintainer and uBO came about, I recall reading something about this. It isn't so much that they don't want reward or recognition but rather the do not want the obligation that comes with it.
Back when I maintained a couple Add-ons for Firefox there was a constant external pressure from users to fix/improve/maintain/develop the Add-on. In addition to that, the user base wants to engage and feel part of a community and interact with you. In a way it's stifling and why I eventually abandoned the Add-ons.
When you start accepting recognition or donations for work you share, there's obligation tied to it.
Some people don't want the obligation, it has nothing to do with virtue.
That's what I was trying to get at. What legacy are you leaving this world? Are you truly leaving it a better place than you were given?
Does gorhill just do this for free because he's an amazing human being, or am I missing where I can buy him a coffee?
Been trying to make a more conscious effort to donate to meaningful causes this year, and I have to say uBO is one of the strongest forces for good on the internet I know.
But that said, looks like they don't want donations[2]
> I don't want the administrative workload coming with donations. I don't want the project to become in need of funding in any way: no dedicated home page + no forum = no cost = no need for funding. I want to be free to move onto something else if ever I get tired working on these projects (no donations = no expectations).
> Have a thought for the maintainers of the various lists. These lists are everything. This can't be emphasized enough.
[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-...
> Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.
I am quite sure that kind of nonsense lead to the Origin fork. As far as I understand the old uBlock project was taken over by a contributor who offered to manage user requests but immediately started to look for ways to monetize it and things only went downhill from there.
But yes, although I'd be quite happy to donate to uBO (it is the only extension I find indispensable and I even abandoned Safari after it stopped working there), I cannot help but admire their stance on donations.
The sad thing is that it doesn't have to be this way, if ads weren't so terrible or intrusive gorhill could be working on something else instead. I'm sure people will point out the upside of browser ads but I speculate that it's a net (!) negative.
maybe find other ways to thank or help gorhill.. his work is too much of a gift
uBlock Origin's manifesto. Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.
Without the preset lists of filters, this extension is nothing. So if ever you really do want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which were made available to use by all for free.
You can contribute by helping translate uBlock Origin on Crowdin.
DNS66 works ok for apps that aren't browsers.
Only downside for my usecase is that it doesn't support chromecast, but that only comes up once in a blue moon.
For browser ads, just use Firefox or one of its forks and install uBO.
New - Dark mode Support for dark mode added to the Settings pane, under the (new) Appearance section:
Thanks Raymond!
> A new setting in "Filter lists" pane to control whether uBO should wait for all filter lists to be loaded before unsuspending network activity.
Not a fan of the recent Firefox changes, but alone makes me keep it as the default browser
What specifically do you disagree with? I actually feel the opposite way. Finally after years of ignoring macOS Firefox feels more at home and the UI changes make it much more pleasant to use.
People seem to shit on Mozilla/Firefox often, and often without any evidence or useful data to work with. And they often say they use Chrome instead, run by an organization that those same people would probably say is user-hostile.
It's like seeing people criticize corruption in Western democratic governments and declaring they're avoiding that mess by moving to Moscow.
Ok, but defining the implications of 1st party statements to 3rd parties is tricksy business.
> People seem to shit on Mozilla/Firefox often, and often without any evidence or useful data to work with. And they often say they use Chrome instead, run by an organization that those same people would probably say is user-hostile.
Except ravenstine didn't do any of that, so you're applying your issues with other people to the wrong conversation. They responded with depth before you posted this.
> It's like seeing people criticize corruption in Western democratic governments and declaring they're avoiding that mess by moving to Moscow.
You sure you're in the same conversation as everyone else?
> What specifically do you disagree with? I actually feel the opposite way. Finally after years of ignoring macOS Firefox feels more at home and the UI changes make it much more pleasant to use.
Mozilla owns Firefox, but Mozilla is not Firefox. Firefox, for the most part, is fine. The text input I'm typing this in is being rendered by Firefox.
As far as specifics go, Mozilla can hardly be considered well managed by any objective sense. The market share of Firefox has been declining rapidly for years, and Firefox is the product everyone knows Mozilla for. Why then has Mozilla not done anything meaningful to course correct? Why do their executives of a non-profit foundation still get raises when their core product is losing? (to be fair they don't make much compared to for-profit salaries) Why are they more interested in selling other products in a space where there's already massive competition, and using Udemy's pricing trickery to convince you that you're getting a good deal? Why did they abandon Servo? Why did they integrate a commercial service, Pocket, into Firefox and make it opt-out? Did they really need to make Brendon Eich leave because he committed the deadly sin of... being against gay marriage? Do they really need to be blogging about political activism that has nothing to do with the web?
These are all facts you can look up easily.
Yeah, I don't like them. They're not well managed, and they pretty much only exist in their current form because Google needs them to exist. If Google stopped giving money to the Mozilla foundation, lots of people would be laid off, Firefox would go into a tailspin, and they'd be left with a VPN service nobody really wanted. Maybe if money spent on Mozilla VPN clearly went to making Firefox better, more developer friendly, and more prolific, then it would be a somewhat different story, but whether that is actually the case isn't obvious. Even then, it's debatable to what extent any VPN service isn't snake oil.
Not much compared to for-profit executive sallaries, but still way more than is needed to live a comfortable life.
> Rejected by Mozilla Add-ons Team. The reason is that I did not provide an exact link to the origin of the hsluv-0.1.0.min.js library used by uBO to implement dark theme (uBO's About page does credit the author of the library). A README has been added to 1.41.2 to disclose the exact origin of the library.
And for that reason, I'm sticking with Firefox. It's such a delight to see "transparency and audibility" are a hard engineering requirement. We in open source don't have much in the way of firm engineering processes, but we have that - and usually it's enough to ensure our software doesn't actively undermine us.
But some time in the last half years I started having lots of new tabs. Right now I am at 60. 3 of which are interesting. So every day I have to spend about one minute closing tabs because firefox becomes sluggish (old lowhrange phone).
Ublock origin is the only thing keeping me on Firefox, but to be honest I have started looking at other browsers because this is driving me insane.
I have had a few cases where even that didn't work and instead I had to switch to my phone and disconnect from my wifi to ensure that the DNS block list I use isn't the problem.
Changing the icon to, shudder, the edge icon might help and call it "Internet" and maybe she will use it. Most people do not really know, or care, that their browser is.
I do this with very un - techsavvy people and install uBo and they have a fairly safe time online.
To be fair, I don't think you can install certificates on a Chromecast for example, so it might not be practically feasible for all devices, but a blanket "SSL makes that impossible" is not correct.
That’s news to me. Can you expand on this ? I always assumed if an API Endpoint for example is served on TLS it’s secure till the termination. No ?
Cert pinning isn't used by browsers in general.
Adguard Docs on it: https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/https-filtering#how-does-h...
Charles Proxy: https://www.charlesproxy.com/documentation/proxying/ssl-prox...
Once the framework is in place, the interesting action is in filter configuration, right?
https://www.privoxy.org/ says latest release is about two months ago.
And the biggest problem is most of sites are already upgraded to https, it needs MITM attack, but lots of applications won't accept any user certificate... (so adguard needs be installed to let those apps bypass its proxy, that's mean, you cannot just host a central proxy server to filter all ssl traffic)
Fun Fact: uBO might wait, but Chrome DGAF and will load pages without waiting for all extensions to properly load.
As an example, I donate to https://patreon.com/blocklist . Amazingly, right now, there are only 43 patrons.
In simple terms, it's Google's attempt to stop AD-blockers interfering with their business model.
They’d asked ‘why do you even need sideloading, what apps would you even need?’
I’d said ‘emulators’, but uBlock is definitely another thing I wish I could sideload onto my iPhone.
You usually have to wait for the trackers, ads, popups, accept-popups,newsletters signups etc. I basically cant view 60% of the webpages google recommends for me ony android mobile. The other 40% is usually just super thin seo content :/
I just finished reading the Gemini Protocol specs. I really hope something like this takes off and there will be a second 'silo/community' running alongside the modern web.
I don't use uBO just for ads, I have tons of custom cosmetic filters to block all the god damn always-on-top video players, popups, fullscreen fade outs, annoying sidebars, non-ad animations, fonts, etc.
Even subtitle ads break your focus from the content, give bad incentives, unfair leverage, etc.
If ads were not here, most junk content in the internet would not exist because people would not pay 20 cents to see it. They pay to see it with ads, because it's a price they don't pay consciously, nor can they assess the consequences clearly.
I'm for the total and complete ban of ads. A content can't exist without it? Ask people to pay. If they don't, it means it didn't have real value. Let it die.
Worse, ads create a huge asymmetry of power in the favor of those who already have it. If you can throw a lot of money to ads, you can gain on the competition. Local small shops can't do that, so ads promotes way more coca cola than organic carrots.
Besides, the people publishing ads have an agenda that almost never align with the customers interest. People say there are ads they want to see, but the reality is that even those ads are not trying to make you more knowledgeable. They try to sell you something.
We have thousands of communities of experts in stuff, testers, consumers, bloggers, than can inform you. You don't need ads to know about something.
Society as a whole would be better without it.
Newspaper would be more objective, streets would be more beautiful, content would be more qualitative.
What about all those youtubers that couldn't exist without ads ?
99.99999% of them are crap. The youtube frontpage is a trash can.
A minority is good, but in the new adsless society, some of them would survive in a different way. Some would not, but the benefits are more important. Just like the US didn't keep thralls because "think of the economy".
Finally, the ads lead to websites to promote engagement at all cost, which fuels fake news, outrages, and tribalism on social medias. Ads are a burden to the human species.
And I say that... as a person who gets a lot of revenue from ads.
I do. When I want to see products, I'll explicitly ask for them. Nobody is allowed to grab my attention unsolicited. I have attention deficit, it's hard enough to focus as it is and I really don't need entitled company thinking it's okay to just hijack it at their convenience. I really couldn't care less about their "legitimate business interests" or whatever.
When email users do it, we call it spam. When applications do it, we call it focus stealing. Advertising is just yet another form of abuse that should not be tolerated under any circumstances. If they won't stop, we'll make technology that will make them stop. We don't need to apologize for it or try to reach a compromise with them. Their business model is unacceptable, period.
I have recently switched to AdGuard as a system-wide blocker on all my devices since uBlock will be unusable on Chromium browsers due to them blocking MV2 extensions in 2023.
While still a good product, the UI is nowhere near the quality of uBlock Origin, nor are the options which are available to the user.
I use a pi-hole and these days I have to:
- block dns advertisement of my ISP's dns server for ipv6 (which, there's no UI for that on my router so i have to edit the config by hand) - maintain a list of dns over https ips and block them in my firewall (since mitming this traffic is a huge pain) - force all traffic to port 853 to my pi and setup a masquerade for that traffic so the client doesn't know - force all traffic to port 53 to my pi and setup a masquerade for that traffic so the client doesn't know
It is the best AdBlock out there in my opinion. Works especially well for certain dirty pages with nasty ads.
I use Firefox with uBO, and am not supportive of Apple’s position on not allowing uBO. But I see the value in controlling what information browser extensions can see, capture and possibly exfiltrate.
Should update presently.
Is there a reason why it's not available on iOS?
Because in your link above, the alternative recommendations have now either become "un-recommended" or have massive reported performance issues.
For ioswide adblock: nextdns dns profile is the best you're gonna get as well. With no battery usage as it's just a dns profile.
Just checked the link and the only arguments against 1blocker is the subscription model and paid upgrades.
Nothing significant against adguard or wipr.
The do not recommend list only have:
-Adblock plus
-Ublock
-Adblock for safari
Anyway, as I said, nothing comes close to ublock origin but it is what it is.