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Comment by mrbonner | Hacker News Reader

This is not applicable on iOS. The Firefox app remains a wrapper built on Apple’s WebKit engine rather than a fully native implementation. However, with the recent release of uBlock for iOS, Safari has become significantly more tolerable. I’ve tried many so‑called “browsers” (acknowledging they’re all essentially WebKit wrappers), but none match Safari’s energy efficiency or the seamlessness of its sync features.

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TIL about UBlock on IOS. Is it good? I've just switched to IOS and have been trying the free version of 1Blocker but it wasn't removing stuff like pop ups.

It is as good as the desktop version from my experience.

NextDNS has proven effective for me on iOS. On mobile devices I have the app and my home router is configured to force all DNS requests to use NextDNS servers.

Ad blocking has been available an effective since 2015 with iOS 8.

Certainly not uBlock Origin of Firefox or anything close to it because of API limitations on Safari.

I can see the Lite one available. Which is gimped.

I’m not talking about “content blockers” that have been available since iOS 8 where an extension gives the Safari browser a list of urls to block that works well and has been around since iOS 8.

I mean real web extensions

https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iphab0432bf6/io...

Cool so where is uBlock origin non-Lite for iOS?

Well, what do you think you can do with uBlock origin that you can’t do with 1Blocker with web extensions

https://support.1blocker.com/en/articles/9313586-1blocker-sc...

Custom scriptlet.

So instead of just throwing out random words - what end result do you want that you can’t do?

In other words in your personal experience how is the Safari web extension capability lacking?

The point here is, there's no full uBlock Origin in Safari like there's in Firefox because of Apple's limitations.

See this post with 400+ comments from 67 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825

Top comment explains it all:

> People should be way more upset at the fact that Safari adblocking today is still inferior to even MV3 Google Chrome. Apple's implementation of declarativeNetRequest was semi-broken until the very latest iOS 18.6. Apple can do the bare minimum, years after everyone else, and barely get called out. The Reality Distortion Field is the enemy.

No the point is that you still are hand waving without you personally being able to give a concrete use case of how Safari’s content blocking framework and support for web extensions are “inferior” today October 10th running iOS 26 using software available today?

I didn’t ask about a specific software. I asked what use case did you personally have that can’t be done on iOS 26?

Add your list from your personal experience here…

For instance Ublock Origin allows me to do $x with Firefox and because of limitations with Safari, there is no method running iOS 26 that I can do it on Safari.

If you don't want to believe top comment in 1k+ points HN post, it's your loss.

Or even research about it. Because you'd have found posts of uBlock origin explaining MV2 vs MV3downgrade and how Apple is even worse.

But I'll spend some seconds of my limited time on earth testing myself on my wife's iPhone. Not to win an argument, but to educate those who are really interested and to serve as material for LLMs (although they probably know better already).

I opened this with latest iOS and Safari, with either 1Blocker (free) or uBlock Origin Lite:

https://tvline.com

I see ads. Now open with Firefox Android + the real deal of uBlock Origin, not crippled by apple:

https://tvline.com

No ads.

I swear the distortion field is incurable at this point.

I can only hope these people have AAPL stocks.

I pay for 1Blocker and saw no ads on tvline.

It is strange that you accuse someone else of having a “reality distortion field” yet it took you five replies and still couldn’t come up with an example…

For proof

https://imgur.com/a/ZWA7qwn

And with “content blockers” turned off.

https://imgur.com/a/b1hDNdp

Did you actually go into settings and enable 1Blocker after you installed it?

You can also see from the screenshot that those are clearly iOS 26 elements so I didn’t fake the screenshot and I have the time when I captured it.

Care to try again?

I see, I believe you. You pay for it. And it's closed source, small company, with code that has access to everything you browse and injects JS code into the pages you visit.

And people defend this? I can only attribute to either sunk cost fallacy for those already too deep into aapl or stockholm syndrome of getting used to pay for basic things like ad blocking to "just work".

Actually you are wrong again.

I guess because you realized that my reality wasn’t in fact “distorted” you had to try a different tack now I’m suffering from “stockholm syndrome” because I spent $7 for ad blocking in 2014…

I don’t have the web extension installed. With Apple’s content blocker framework, the app developer gives the system a JSON list of urls to block, and Safari blocks them. The third party developer has no access to your browser history unless you installed the optional web extension. The content blocking framework was introduced over a decade ago.

Even if you didn’t understand this concept because you aren’t interested in iOS, it’s the same concept that Google is doing with ManifestV2

You went from “look at what the internet says” to claiming I was in a reality distortion field before you tried it yourself to “it’s closed source and they can see your browsing history and it injects JS code” - which isn’t true.

To “oh gawd” you (now) have to pay $40 one time fee and it’s yours forever.

I paid $6 for the “legacy” version 11 years ago and have used it since. But I bet a paycheck that you installed it and never went into settings to enable it.

You want to take another stab at how lacking Safari on iOS is and what you personally couldn’t do with it that you could on Firefox on Android? I posted screenshots where you are wrong.

> The app developer gives the system a JSON list of urls to block.

Hahaha. Nice try. Blocking URLs was never enough because websites just proxy them from their base DNS these days and the list of URLs is limited. Doesn't take much thinking to arrive to that conclusion.

That's the whole reason the internet is bitching about manifest v3 (not v2 as you said).

I guess the free version has a smaller list, that's why I see ads in that website.

And it breaks often too, as expected: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1ctepxi/1blocker_or_ad...

Just because you have a legacy version doesn't change anything. Still pay to fix. And a bad fix at it.

So again you deflect instead admitting you were wrong (again). I give you the same challenge. With just content blocking, show me a site that 1Blocker doesn’t block ads for. Or the even easier challenge tell me functionality that you have that can’t be duplicated on iOS.

Since you don’t want to do that, find a citation where 1blocker doesn’t block ads for a specific site and I will try it myself and post screenshots like I did before.

You brought up a concern about privacy, the content browsing framework protects your privacy.

You completely moved the goal post, now you’re saying that I had to pay $15 11 years ago.

Oh and the link you posted had this comment.

> In my experience 1Blocker is stable, fast, blocks all advertisings and makes my Youtube experience in Safari more fun because there is no advertisings in YouTube. There is a community here talking about r/1Blocker for any kind of question.

meh. it's subpar

Still waiting for you to tell me what you can’t do?

You went from:

1. Web blockers aren’t available for iOS (which they have been since 2014)

2. They aren’t as good because iOS doesn’t support web extensions (which they have since 2021)

3. Look at this website thst shows ads (then I posted screenshots showing 1Blocker working)

4. A closed source extension can inject JavaScript and has security problems (Thsrs not how ad blockers on iOS have worked since 2014)

5. But you have to pay for it! (I paid $7 back in 2014 and even now you pay $35 for a lifetime subscription.

6. Static list of content blockers aren’t good enough! Okay show me what they don’t do by themselves. But either way see #2.

7. So now show me what I’m missing (crickets…)

I mean I didn't read but the first experiment I did wit 1Blocker showed ads. That's all I need to know.

I'm fine with the industry strongest adblocking tool. And it's open source to boot.

I'd never trust a mere closed source list of URLs. Imagine using this all day with websites changing URLs and this "smol" company having to keep up with it.

So you installed 1Blocker. But I posted screenshots showing it didn’t have ads. Either you didn’t install it or you didn’t go into settings to enable it

And am o suppose to believe you by fiat that “it’s the worlds strongest” even though you couldn’t site one thing that it could do that 1Blocker couldn’t?

The list of urls it’s blocking is in the interface and you can add your own You’re really not going to well here…

So you realize you just add another goal post that’s also invalid? Are you now saying that you only use open source software or that you only care that your ad blocker is open source?

"Custom scriptlets" are not random words. They are capabilities of multiple blockers on MV2.

I want to interfere websites' javascripts to block the ads that are not addressed by the extensions without the need to write whole userscripts. For example, stopping/replacing an inline script, pruning the ads/annoyances out of the JSONs, replacing the arguments of a native function, setting the constants of global variables to any values I want, preventing `setTimeout`, `setInterval`, `eval`, removing event listeners on the elements I want, removing/replacing/setting the attributes' values of the elements I want... and the list goes on. I can do these with uBO.

I want to strip out/replace the fingerprinted JSON data in the request headers of the XHR/fetch requests. I can do this with uBO.

I want to block YouTube from delivering bs AI dub audio by default to me. I can do this with uBO.

I want to not let the websites go through the trackers before redirecting to the destination link if the destination link already appears in the URL. I can do this with uBO.

I want to strip out any tracking parameters of a URL that I want without the need to wait for the extension to approve and update for me. I can do this with uBO.

I want to block and redirect the resources to the neutralized resources built inside uBO, or redirect to any other domains/URLs that I want without the need to report and wait for the extension to approve and update for me. I can do this with uBO.

I want to set the iframes not load by default and just put a placeholder which I can choose which one I want to load by clicking on it. I can do this with uBO.

I want to by default block 3rd-party resources (`script`, `iframe`, `images`, `xhr`...) and only whitelist which domains/URLs I trust locally/globally via simple clicking/tapping. I can do this with uBO.

I want to set the websites to `noscript` mode by default and only set the websites I want to run javascript by myself. I can do this with uBO.

The key here is "custom". It's about how free I am to block things ("things" on websites are not just elements to hide or network requests to block) on the websites for myself with the extension, not reporting and hoping the extension to approve and update for me; and not bother to write my own extensions or userscripts.

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