I’ve been maintaining a list of Safari ad blockers (the list is up to 25 now). As a natural consequence, people have been asking me to recommend an ad blocker, or at least tell them what I use.
Given that I’ve not done an extensive study of ad blockers, rather pick one over the other, I thought I’d share my thoughts on a path to consider when picking one for yourself.
First things first, I’d start with a free ad blocker, just to dip your toes in the water, get a sense of what an ad blocker can do, how it works, and the change it brings to your browsing experience. Feel free to use the aforementioned list as a launch point. Check out a few, find a free one with reasonable reviews in the App Store, and install it.
To enable an ad blocker, you’ll go to Settings > Safari > Content Blockers, then tap the switch next to your ad blocker of choice.
With the ad blocker enabled, go to a few ad heavy sites and get a sense of what’s changed. If I might suggest a good place to start, take a trip to the infamous New York Post web site. I’d suggest doing this experiment while connected to WiFi, to prevent unwanted data counting against your data plan.
Do this without the ad blocker, then with it. Notice the time it takes to initially load the site (consider quitting Safari between each viewing to be sure there’s no caching going on), then try to dismiss any ads that appear.
With the ad blocker in place, did any ads make it through the filter? Do some browsing. Do you see any ads at all?
With that experience under your belt, here are a few questions to consider:
Does the ad blocker offer a white list you can edit? In other words, is there a way to tell it not to block ads from, say, The Loop? Obviously, a white list makes it possible for you to let your favorite sites bring in their ad dollars. After basic ad blocking capability, this is the number one feature I look for.
How does the ad blocker figure out what to block? Does the ad blocker update its own blacklist? Does it offer separate switches for trackers/ads/images/adult content?
The goal of your ad blocker is to prevent unwanted content from slowing down Safari and, more importantly, prevent content from silently/unknowingly consuming your data plan. Once that is achieved, the tunability of the ad blocker is a true personal preference.
To be clear, I’ve got no issue with ads. They pay the freight and can be artistic/entertaining. To me, what started the ball rolling downhill here was the discovery of ads that carry invisible, data plan consuming content, hiding behind an innocuous ad. If you haven’t already, take a look at the post that got me started.
Hope this is helpful.