My 1Blocker subscription just ended. So it’s time to review which AD-blocker to user on iOS and MacOS
What do you use? what makes you like it? Have you tried other things so you have a good comparison?
Should I just re-subscribe to 1Blocker, or switch?
The $5/year 1Blocker subscription has been just fine for me and I think reasonable. I also have Wipr enabled.
On macOS I have Wipr for Safari and uBlock Origin for everything else.
Pi-Hole on my home network takes care of a very large portion of ads and is device-independent.
Haven’t messed with browser/OS-level ad blockers in a number of years. I’m so rarely out of the house nowadays. Maybe next spring when I start going places again.
I’ve left and returned to 1Blocker several times in recent years. I’m with 1Blocker and feel it’s adequate. There’s always the occasional site that 1Blocker just whites out completely, and it has no effect on Facebook’s obnoxious adverts. But 95% of the time I’m satisfied.
Put me down for something along the lines of what @Alevyinroc is using. Pi-Hole is a nice free solution but the key really is moving the ad block smarts to the DNS level so that all devices underneath get the benefits regardless of platform or installed software.
My choice will be NG Firewall from Untangle I’m going overkill because my next home network is going to be pretty sophisticated. AdGuard DNS was another product I was eyeballing.
I know I can blacklist domains in localhost but I’m looking for an easy “send this domain to bitbucket hell” button like in Pi-Hole, Untangle or AG DNS.
Disclaimer- I whitelist websites who have ads that don’t annoy me. If a site triggers my ADHD/Anxiety then it gets hammered. Advertising should be sensitive to our mental health.
I’m also on 1Blocker and it’s been fine but moving ad blocking to the DNS level sometimes bypasses the “I see you have Adblock going please disable” warnings on some sites.
Like @Alevyinroc and @hmurchison, I also use Pi-Hole and I find it very effective. However, in order to use Pi-Hole, you have to obtain and configure a Raspberry Pi (which runs a derivative of Linux), download and install Pi-Hole, and configure your network to use it. Depending on your router this last part may require additional steps. The Pi-Hole forum is very helpful and responsive getting this all working but it does take some time and it adds another device to your network that requires maintenance.
Pi-Hole works by blocking requests to ad servers. I’ve noticed an increase in “self-hosted” ads (i.e. ads that are served by the target website instead of a dedicated ad server - YouTube is a good example). Pi-Hole cannot block these ads.
I took advantage of a special offer to get a lifetime subscription to AdGuard (which is also on Setapp). I want to trim my subscriptions down, and transition as possible to lifetime licenses.
It gets the job done. It’s not as neat or customizable that they say, but it’s no worse than the competition. It just has different quirks. And no subscription.
Brave browser on all my devices.
Free, nothing to mess around with.
I tried pi-hole, but it was fiddly and something went sideways with it (I’ve put it out of my mind now).
Current Brave stats on my iMac Pro:
How does the Chromium based browser work for you? I admit I’m terribly tempted to ditch Safari for the extensions ecosystem… but I’m a tab hoarder so the battery impact frightens me.
On the original subject, the question made me try AdBlock Pro again out of curiosity (have a lifetime license as well, but it’s subscription). I’m very impressed by it - it’s the fastest and simplest ad blocker I’ve tried, and it catches stuff others miss (like those bloody RGPD cookie notices).
It works well. The only time I need to use Safari is on iPad OS to save a bookmark to the home screen.
I originally tried Brave because Safari (macOS) wouldn’t view some webpage reports generated by my analysis software. Brave worked fine.
How well does syncing work for brave between Mac, iPhone, and iPad
Thank you. I’m reluctant to give more power to Chromium but I’ve tried it on both Mac and iOS following your recommendation and I’m extremely impressed by the speed; also, you get access to all the Chrome extensions which I’ve been missing very badly. I think you made me a convert 
When I’ve tried it, it works.
For me, bookmarks are just a big dumpster where I put things and don’t look at them again.
From what I’ve seen they just rolled out a new sync version that does not yet work on iOS but is promised. On desktop, it syncs extensions too, which I find extremely useful (and I’ve missed in Safari too).
I’m using Pi-hole on my local network, I’m debating choices, I have various servers running around I could set up a VPN and Pi-hole on for when I leave the house - but as that’s not a regular thing I need to do right now I figure I’ll work that out later! Until I started using Pi-hole I was using 1Blocker which I still have.
Me too, but with “The Great Suspender” extension stale tabs get a time-out until I refresh them.
Forgot about that! Thanks for the reminder. It’s been a while since I last used Chrome. Will install it right away.
How do you bookmark pages then?
You might consider NextDNS instead.
With iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur they no longer need a fake VPN, but natively support DNS over HTTPS.
(and they already have plenty of blocklists to chose from)
