I just searched within the (edit: iOS App Store) App Store app for
ublock origin lite
“ublock origin lite”
For the unquoted search, there are twelve different apps/items returned above it - you really have to scroll down to find it at number 13.
Even for the quoted search, it’s returned in fourth place.
More interestingly the second time I searched with quoted it’s in third place, and the third time of searching the sponsored items at the top is getting even more random.
mort96 · 4m ago
I just searched for uBlock. Top result is an ad for another ad blocker. Second result is an ad blocker called "Ublock", with "Origin" in its tags; a clear scam whose purpose is to leech off the reputation of uBlock Origin and trick people.
Apple's App Store is chock full of scams like this. It's not just bad search, it's a failure to enforce any kind of anti scam policy (combined with seemingly intentionally terrible search).
whstl · 1h ago
Apple is really bad at search, and on purpose. Welp, money before quality!
cedws · 13s ago
Nah I think they’re just bad at search, macOS Spotlight search has to be the most slow janky search I have ever used.
e40 · 1h ago
I don’t even see uBO Lite in the iOS App Store. I scrolled pretty far, too.
Meekro · 1h ago
Working fine for me-- when I search under Mac Apps for "ublock origin lite" (no quotes), it appears in 1st place.
mort96 · 2m ago
For me, searching for "uBlock origin lite" (without the quotes) puts it in 3rd place; below AdBlock Pro and an ad for trip(dot)com.
When I search "uBlock origin" it doesn't seem to show up at all.
tomalpha · 1h ago
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I too get the same for Mac apps, but for iOS apps still see the same competitor results returned first.
For me, that's the same whether I use the App Store from my phone, or laptop.
Thank you for the link. Can some moderator please update the link? Thanks in advance.
MortyWaves · 58m ago
So I tapped the link on my iPhone and was taken to the App Store.
The download button is available. Great! Finally I can block ads in mobile too.
It installs, opening it is a simple message saying I need to enable it in Safari settings. Strange, but ok.
I go to Settings -> Safari -> Extensions -> uBlock Origin Lite.
> “uBO Lite” is not available for this version of Safari.
This feels like a series of failures, why is it available for download on iPhone if it doesn’t work at all? Is iOS Safari really that different to Mac Safari?
pdpi · 51m ago
I've used Firefox Focus as an ad blocker for Safari on iOS for several years now. I don't actually use it as my browser, I just use Safari as normal, but it integrates with Safari, and seems to work well enough.
instig007 · 8m ago
Try Brave browser on iOS, it cuts everything irrelevant without third-party apps, and you also get background media playback on locked screen (settings toggle) on youtube as "one more thing".
ErneX · 45m ago
Extensions for Safari on iOS and iPadOS have been available since 2021, I’ve been using ad blockers on those systems, but it’s nice the have uBlock now.
lapcat · 26m ago
This is a bit misleading. Safari content blockers have been available on iOS since 2015. In 2021, JavaScript-based Safari web extensions were added.
karel-3d · 12m ago
Trying to actually write one before, it's incredibly frustrating experience, as you still need to have some weird native glue code in in Swift/Obj-C. And everything is under-documented, as it the true Apple Experience. (I forgot the details. I can find the code on github, maybe.)
If you ask yourself why there are so little Safari extensions, this is why.
edit: I look at the code now... I needed to wrestle with BOTH cocoapods and npm, at which point I gave up
cm2187 · 53m ago
Update your iphone and it will work
isodev · 34m ago
The whole point of going iPhone is not to have to deal with these kinds of situations.
antihero · 29m ago
The whole point of using an iPhone is that you don't have to update it?
idle_zealot · 30m ago
Bad news: these kinds of situations are inevitable. You've abdicated control of your digital life for a comforting lie
bspammer · 45m ago
It seems to require iOS 18.6, it’s working for me after updating.
forgotoldacc · 1h ago
I've been using Adguard for a couple years and have had no problems. I think I've only seen ads slip through a couple times. If there's anyone who's able to compare, is there any real difference between these ad blockers?
drukenemo · 9m ago
I’ve been testing it in beta for a month or so and I can report that at least to me websites load much faster than with Adguard or Wipr.
saw-lau · 46m ago
Just adding another alternative that I've been using for years for people to consider - 1Blocker.
Thanks for asking this. I have always had Adguard on iOS with no issues wondering if there is any extra benefit to switching to uBlock Origin Lite on Safari.
encom · 49m ago
It's been a few years since I've used an Iphone, but back then I used AdGuard. It wasn't terrible, but I encountered frequent breakage, and updating it (rules) was miserable and slow.
The generally awful and sad state of web browing on IOS was a big reason why I switched to Android.
nottorp · 39m ago
Commercial offerings can always slip towards allowing some ads for pay.
Maybe not today, but there's no guarantee the company won't get sold tomorrow.
Not to mention that your AdGuard seems to be one of the 10 billion apps that competes for my subscriptions budget.
JoeriBe · 1h ago
This app is currently not available in your country or region.
yashasolutions · 12m ago
The beauty of Apple. As if there’s any actual technical limitation in distributing a binary over the internet.
kumekay · 1h ago
Not available in Czechia/EU
comrade1234 · 1h ago
I'm in CH and it's available to me but I can never remember if I'm set to the Swiss store or the USA store...
Ok, just looked and I think I'm on the Swiss store. Well, at least you guys get the option of adding non-apple app stores while we do not.
Squarex · 1h ago
Can confirm. I hope that they enable it before the Testflight build expires.
morphle · 1h ago
Not available in the Netherlands/Europe.
eliseumds · 30m ago
Same, not available in Spain.
donohoe · 1h ago
… and you are in what country/region?
whstl · 1h ago
Germany/Europe, not available for me.
mobilio · 1h ago
Bulgaria/Europe - also not available
Philpax · 1h ago
Sweden/Europe, same
owenmcfadzen · 1h ago
For me as well
yapyap · 1h ago
For me as well
frou_dh · 1h ago
I've been puzzled reading previous discussions about Safari where people acted as if it doesn't have good ad-blocking, just because the brand name extension they're familiar with wasn't available. There has been very good ad-blocking available on Safari for a long time (both macOS and iOS) using for example AdGuard.
shawnz · 1h ago
Ad blockers on Safari effectively have the same weaknesses as ad blockers on Chrome now have since the deprecation of the blocking webRequest API (which Safari never supported).
> the blocking webRequest API (which Safari never supported)
This is inaccurate. Safari (Mac) supported it until 2019, and indeed there was a version of uBlock Origin for Safari back then.
frou_dh · 1h ago
As I understand it, AdGuard uses (in addition to a browser extension) a system-level local network proxy so can do anything to requests and responses?
Confusingly, there are 3 offerings: "AdGuard for Mac", "AdGuard for iOS" and "AdGuard for Safari" and I think it's the first 2 that are the good stuff, even for Safari.
Squarex · 1h ago
For privacy aware people it can be important that an open source and well trusted extension is available.
broeng · 55m ago
It's been possible for about a decade to use Firefox Focus as a Content Blocker for Safari. I assume it's open source, "well trusted" is of course subjective.
skydhash · 1h ago
Adblocking as links bloking can be sufficient, but sometimes you need to bring the big guns and alter the page content itself. Safari has even "Hide distracting elements" now, which can not be an extension. That cements the idea that most uBlock Origin features should be part of the browser to make it a wonderful user agent.
broeng · 53m ago
It's been possible to use Content Blockers for Safari for a long time, which alters the page content. Firefox Focus came out about a decade ago, and can be used as one.
vouaobrasil · 13m ago
Nice. Although there are content blockers for the iPhone, uBLock is the best. One of the worst aspects of iOS is that content blockers for it generally suck, and the web sucks without them.
Gave it a try; works better than expected. Has the custom filter tool (similar to element picker in main Origin), so I can block out the Linkedin Feed and other pestilence that Wipr couldn't tackle.
Thanks a million to gorhill!
tux · 1h ago
Requires iOS 18.0+ sadly older iOS not supported :-(
TheSilva · 1h ago
I have been using the version published in Testflight for quite a while now and I must say I haven't seen much difference from my previous setup (Firefox Focus configured as the ad blocking provider in Safari settings)
But, given their record on providing excellent software and features, I am so happy to switch to them and to see what they are capable of in the future!
fhd2 · 1h ago
Content blockers on iOS are severely limited compared to what's possible with powerful extension mechanisms (Firefox, Chrome before Manifest V3) or built-in ad blockers (Brave). So there's not really differentiation on a technical level, which is where uBlock Origin was always strong. On these other platforms, there was a lot of innovation going on when I was in the space (2020), especially against sites that actively try to circumvent ad blockers. On iOS, there's not much that can be done. At least unless I missed some major developments.
As for the lists of resources to block and DOM elements to hide - which is by and large all an iOS ad blocker is - most just use the popular ones like EasyList with a few additions. uBlock Origin has a good track record of maintaining additional filters, so I think there's reason to believe it'll work better than most.
But all in all, for these two reasons, you probably won't notice much of a difference between different ad blockers on iOS.
mottiden · 8m ago
is this ad blocker the best?
rckt · 1h ago
I'm a long-time user of Wipr. Does the job perfectly.
drukenemo · 6m ago
Origin feels much faster to me than Wipr
thijsvandien · 1h ago
Generally it works well, but what's particularly annoying is that it hides cookie walls, resulting in non-functional websites until I disable content blockers, close the dialog and re-enable them. Not sure if uBlock does any better, though.
layer8 · 58m ago
Ghostery does the same, but has more fine-grained per-website controls. You can for example turn off just the consent-popup-blocker function for a website while keeping the anti-tracking ad-blocking functions.
ron_k · 1h ago
This is my only complaint. Most of the websites work fine, but others get stuck. I don’t know if Wipr 2 solved the issue.
jraph · 12m ago
We occasionally have this with the actual full uBlock Origin on Firefox as well.
I don't think there's a general solution for this issue. Content blockers need to provide a workaround for each situation, if at all possible.
At least it's possible to contribute to uBlock Origin's filters.
v7engine · 1h ago
I don't know if it is working, because sometimes, I see Google Adsense ads on Wordle site.
kovariantenkak · 1h ago
From the permissions in Safari:
> Web Page Contents and Browsing History - Can read and alter sensitive information on web pages, including passwords, phone numbers and credit cards, and see your browsing history on the current tab's web page when you use the extension.
What does it mean for me to use the extension? Am I using it if it is installed?
dialup_sounds · 1h ago
Reading and altering content on web pages is the purpose of the extension.
kovariantenkak · 1h ago
That does not answer the question in any way. Especially, since it claims to use zero CPU when active and because iOS ad blocking works differently.
donohoe · 1h ago
Installation is the first step, then you must enable it.
If you go to safari settings and enable it there, then you are using it.
kovariantenkak · 1h ago
And then am I using it if I'm loading the extension by interacting with it?
Because simply enabling it will not give it access to the webpage.
throawayonthe · 1h ago
loading a page will
comrade1234 · 1h ago
iOS 18.5 safari can't use it. I swear I was successfully using the beta. Guess I'll try upgrading to iOS 18.6.
comrade1234 · 1h ago
Ok, updated and can be activated on iOS 18.6 safari.
SanjayMehta · 1h ago
Installs, but trying to enable in Safari throws an error: “Unable to load uBlock Origin Lite.”
Even for the quoted search, it’s returned in fourth place.
More interestingly the second time I searched with quoted it’s in third place, and the third time of searching the sponsored items at the top is getting even more random.
Apple's App Store is chock full of scams like this. It's not just bad search, it's a failure to enforce any kind of anti scam policy (combined with seemingly intentionally terrible search).
When I search "uBlock origin" it doesn't seem to show up at all.
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
The download button is available. Great! Finally I can block ads in mobile too.
It installs, opening it is a simple message saying I need to enable it in Safari settings. Strange, but ok.
I go to Settings -> Safari -> Extensions -> uBlock Origin Lite.
> “uBO Lite” is not available for this version of Safari.
This feels like a series of failures, why is it available for download on iPhone if it doesn’t work at all? Is iOS Safari really that different to Mac Safari?
If you ask yourself why there are so little Safari extensions, this is why.
edit: I look at the code now... I needed to wrestle with BOTH cocoapods and npm, at which point I gave up
https://1blocker.com/
The generally awful and sad state of web browing on IOS was a big reason why I switched to Android.
Maybe not today, but there's no guarantee the company won't get sold tomorrow.
Not to mention that your AdGuard seems to be one of the 10 billion apps that competes for my subscriptions budget.
Ok, just looked and I think I'm on the Swiss store. Well, at least you guys get the option of adding non-apple app stores while we do not.
See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b... for some examples of things you can't do without those APIs.
This is inaccurate. Safari (Mac) supported it until 2019, and indeed there was a version of uBlock Origin for Safari back then.
Confusingly, there are 3 offerings: "AdGuard for Mac", "AdGuard for iOS" and "AdGuard for Safari" and I think it's the first 2 that are the good stuff, even for Safari.
Thanks a million to gorhill!
But, given their record on providing excellent software and features, I am so happy to switch to them and to see what they are capable of in the future!
As for the lists of resources to block and DOM elements to hide - which is by and large all an iOS ad blocker is - most just use the popular ones like EasyList with a few additions. uBlock Origin has a good track record of maintaining additional filters, so I think there's reason to believe it'll work better than most.
But all in all, for these two reasons, you probably won't notice much of a difference between different ad blockers on iOS.
I don't think there's a general solution for this issue. Content blockers need to provide a workaround for each situation, if at all possible.
At least it's possible to contribute to uBlock Origin's filters.
> Web Page Contents and Browsing History - Can read and alter sensitive information on web pages, including passwords, phone numbers and credit cards, and see your browsing history on the current tab's web page when you use the extension.
What does it mean for me to use the extension? Am I using it if it is installed?
If you go to safari settings and enable it there, then you are using it.