The makers of the popular Adblock Plus software which is designed to block ads and other scripts in desktop web browsers launched a web browser for Android as a public beta earlier this year. Now the browser is out of beta… and it’s also available for iOS.

You can download the Adblock Browser from the App Store or Google Play Store. It could theoretically speed up your browsing experience and protect your privacy… but you also might want to think about unchecking the “block ads on this site” option for websites you want to support — without advertising revenue, many sites (like this one) would probably cease to exist.

adblock mobile

By preventing ads from displaying on your phone or tablet, the Adblock browser can save bandwidth and speed up your browsing experience. There are also options to disable social media buttons from displaying on websites and to disable tracking.

Adblock Browser will let certain “acceptable ads” through by default. But you can also opt to add any site to a whitelist.

adblock browser whitelist

While it’s not all that surprising to see a web browser with native support for ad blocking on Android, this is a relatively new feature for iPhone and iPad users.

 

Adblock Browser may be one of the first solutions for preventing ads from loading on iOS devices that doesn’t require jailbreaking your phone. But it won’t be the last.

Apple’s iOS 9 includes support for “content blocking extensions” for Safari. This will let third-party apps prevent certain types of content from loading in the default web browser on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. So we’ll likely see many new tools that can block ads, social media buttons, and other scripts from running on Apple devices that can support the feature (they’ll need iOS 9 and a 64-bit processor).

via Adblock Plus

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9 replies on “Adblock Plus mobile browser launches for iOS, Android”

  1. He folks. Maybe you were a bit surprised why you can´t find my app in
    ‪#‎Apple‬ ‪#‎Appstore‬ when you search for „ADBLOCK“ or „ADBLOCK
    BROWSER“. There is just one simple reason: the main competitor – eyeo
    gmbh – trademarked these both generic keywords as their brand. And this
    just to eliminate their competitors out of the game.
    РBenjamin L̦we, Appsolut Secure GmbH

  2. Does this browser pledge to protect my privacy? Firefox does. But Firefox is essentially Broken on Android AFAIK. It is waaay to slow and crashes waaay too often.

  3. I wonder if Google’s going to do something. There’s recent news about Google disabling ad blockers in Chrome. They’re also forcing ad block users to watch the full ads on YouTube without the ability to skip them.

  4. “this is a relatively new feature for iPhone and iPad users”
    No, there are a bunch of options for blocking ads on iOS, and some have been around for years.

  5. I am a bit surprised to see it in the Play store, since it interferes with ads and Google is all about ads.

    1. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Google’s is smart enough to know they need to adapt. What better way to do that, than to become more familiar with their enemies.

  6. True objective journalism. The one enemy of a tech news site, and he writes an article about it.

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