WebShield – A new wide-spectrum content blocker for Safari
34 comments
·February 28, 2025delduca
I have been using Wipr2, 100/100 on my adblock testing.
hknws2023saio
The only thing that is holding me back from not making safari my primary browser is not having an extension like ublock origin. This seems really promising.
layer8
What are you missing specifically? I’ve been pretty happy with Ghostery and AdGuard Pro.
nick_
I've been using AdGuard Pro happily on all my devices for about ten years now. I'm wondering what adding Ghostery to the mix does on Safari?
layer8
Ghostery doesn’t just hide consent banners and blocks tracking cookies, it also automatically opts-out from tracking consent.
https://www.ghostery.com/blog/never-consent-by-ghostery#neve...
pbronez
1blocker works well for me on iOS, iPadOS and MacOS https://1blocker.com/
If you want to use uBlock Origin on Webkit you can do it with Kagi's Orion browser. https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/ublock-origin...
alemanek
Second the 1Blocker recommendation. Works really well for me for Mac, iPhone, and iPad
Eric_WVGG
I thought Ghostery has been the gold standard for a pretty long time now…?
workethics
I'm still surprised by how much inertia there is for Ghostery.
People should have stopped using that extension nearly a decade ago after being sold to an advertising company.
Or after they went closed-source.
Or after they were caught selling user info about blocked ads back to the advertisers so they could figure out how to avoid being blocked.
Or after they started showing their own advertisements to users.
voisin
Seems to feature a lot of AdGuard filter lists. Does this blocker differ materially from AdGuard?
sylens
The bar they need to clear right now seems to be Wipr2
pbronez
can you compare/contrast to 1blocker?
perdomon
I like projects like this since Safari is probably the biggest competitor to Chrome, but historically Apple hasn't been kind to these sorts of extensions. I hope they're able to find a way to make it work, because Safari is well-integrated into the iOS ecosystem.
wobfan
While everything you're saying is correct, Safari is only the biggest competitor to Chrome because Apple is going out of their way to make it hard or even impossible in the case of iOS for developers to develop well-oiled browsers for their OSes. Just wanted to add that, because I'm pissed.
gjsman-1000
No; it’s because then, the internet would go from 80% Chromium, to 95% Chromium.
Allowing alternative browser engines does not mean Firefox gets a footing. It means Chromium gets a footing even on iOS, and we start seeing Electron apps on iOS, with every app bundling their own Chromium renderer.
If Apple were forced to allow 3rd party engines on iOS, they might as well shut down WebKit. All hail Blink, the universal engine.
atonse
Eh not quite. I switched off Chrome many years ago (on macOS) because it had gotten so bloated and was constantly running my fans.
I remember reading that Chrome had worked on fixing a lot of that bloat (so did FF). But Safari was a breath of fresh air in how fast it worked and didn't seem to constantly kill my battery.
Yes it has the occasional quirks. But I do like that Apple focuses more on UX than just DevEx by trying to implement everything and the kitchen sink web standards.
As others have said, we definitely need alternative browsers and browser engines.
But at the end of the day, it's just mostly WebKit (and Blink derived from it) and Firefox, so it's not like there's all that much competition.
42lux
Wipr2 does a pretty good job.
busymom0
Can someone explain what "wide-spectrum content blocker" means and how it differs from other ad blockers available for Safari?
TingPing
To set a baseline: Ad blockers work by a combination of static rulesets and dynamic javascript.
Safari does not support the ruleset format of Chrome/Firefox, so a ruleset has to be maintained for it specifically. In practice this is always the AdGuard ruleset. I doubt a single adblocker doesn't use this as a base.
Beyond that is the custom JS they inject. It's hard to say how good it is but that is the only selling point:
- https://github.com/arjpar/WebShield/tree/cae7629f1c5fb79fe76...
AdGuard has its own too:
- https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardForSafari/tree/master/... (JS files)
They look similar in a lot of ways, because well they have to, but I haven't done any deep analysis.
Safari extensions will never match uBlock Origin because it simply does not provide the same APIs (webRequest blocking and DNS) that Firefox does. The ruleset format is also more limited.
drpossum
Have you actually released this or passed Apple's review process? Soliciting external donations for higher level support gets into a grey area about Apple getting their cut from the apps it distributes. If you haven't registered as a non-profit you are also not doing yourself favors.
I would be extremely upset if I donated and then you never made it to the store/got removed from the store because you didn't consider or do due diligence on this process.
9dev
This shouldn’t really be an issue for EU users, right?
drpossum
That should change the calculus for payments, but they
a) still need to affirm their model was deemed acceptable to Apple,
if they're limiting their market to EU users they should
b) say so up front, and
c) limit access to the app and origin of donations by region
because the problems I describe are material for everyone else.
dleeftink
I understand this makes complete sense from an app ecology perspective, but if we were to make a similar bulletin for any other community built product..that list might sound a little overbearing.
busymom0
I don't think soliciting external donations is against Apple's rules as long as those solicitations aren't happening within the app. Don't apps like Spotify give discounts for subscriptions bought outside the app?
drpossum
But it's no longer a donation (regardless if that word is used or not) when you offer things like material support of the app in exchange for the money. Then it is actually a support contract. If they are not registered a non-profit in the US, they it's just regular income and they have to pay taxes on it. Because they made a profit.
My point is I don't believe this is a serious project worth giving money to until they can say they have resolved this with Apple.
busymom0
I still don't think that is against the rules. As long as the app itself is not telling the users to go outside the app to donate/buy things, Apple can't do anything about it.
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ingohelpinger
wondering how many users firefox has lost, myself for sure..
droopyEyelids
This might be silly but it would be awesome if you added a category for blocking blue check accounts on twitter
It would be useful to describe what specifically this adds over existing Safari content blockers in that space.