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iOS 9 lets app developers make ad blockers for Safari

Ad blocking extensions have been possible on Safari for Mac for a long time, but plugin architecture for Safari on iOS is much more limited. With iOS 9, Apple has added a special case of extension for ad blockers. Apps can now include ‘content blocker’ extensions that define resources (like images and scripts) for Safari to not load. For the first time, this architecture makes ad blockers a real possibility for iOS developers to make and iOS customers to install and use.

The inclusion of such a feature at this time is interesting. Apple is also pushing its own news solution in iOS 9 with the News app, which will include ads but not be affected by the content blocking extensions as they only apply to Safari. There is also clearly the potential for Safari ad blockers to hurt Google, which seems to be a common trend with Apple’s announcements recently…

Screen Shot 2015-06-10 at 14.33.30

Online ad revenue makes up the vast majority of Google’s income, although Google has typically struggled with monetizing mobile. The addition of ad blockers to Safari on iOS won’t help that cause.

When users download an app with an ad blocker extension, it shows up in Settings. Users can keep the app installed and disable the content blocker independently by using the toggle switches.

It is still to be seen how Apple will let apps with content blockers get into the App Store. The approval process for something like this will have to be very stringent to prevent abuse. Hopefully, more details about this will come out soon.

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Comments

  1. nelmat - 9 years ago

    That’s great news. The dozens of adverts all over sites such as this one make it almost unusable – you can’t scroll the page without accidentally clicking on a link. So many adverts they make page layout a mess and cause constant errors when trying to browse in an iPad – I’m on the verge of giving up on 9to5mac – more annoying adverts than content these days.

    • freediverx - 9 years ago

      Just remember that those ads pay for the content and website infrastructure that you are consuming at this moment. So use extensions like uBlock judiciously and only block specific ads that are unreasonably intrusive.

      • rnc - 9 years ago

        I don’t care.

        Most content on the net is crap nowadays, so it’s unworthy…

      • Why are you reading crap then?

      • apfwebs - 9 years ago

        When advertising interferes with the presentation or acquisition of web content, it is reasonably within the web user’s right to discard interfering content to seek the desired information. (Surely noisesome popups, for example, interfere with the acquisition of web page content; and injudicious site designers may place advertising in other manners that make content acquisition “inefficient”, at best.) Tommy Smothers said, “The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.” Ad-blocking is simply the exercise of the right not to listen.

    • chrisl84 - 9 years ago

      Gizmodo is worse with their popup video ads

      • PhilBoogie - 9 years ago

        A Gizmo what now? Who the frick is firing up that site?

    • hungarianhc - 9 years ago

      I totally agree. I’m all for content publishers using ads, but when it makes it so that I can’t scroll through a page without accidentally clicking one, that is super obnoxious.

    • Kamil Blixiński - 9 years ago

      There are a lot of good solutions to block ads already on App Store.
      My very favorite is Weblock. Blocks ads in Safari AND all kind of apps, which this method is short on.

  2. butskristof - 9 years ago

    Nice! It maybe wasn’t the most spectacular of keynotes seen but iOS 9 has made some really decent progress here. Big up, Apple!

  3. Screw the ads, this will enable tracker blockers! No more big corporations following our every move so they can monetise our data. So glad Tim Cook is moving iOS and OS X in this direction!

    • rnc - 9 years ago

      Me too!

      Google is going to take a big hit with this!

      • srgmac - 9 years ago

        Unfortunately, Google actually pays a few different ad-block software vendors to purposely whitelist them though.

      • nelson1112233 - 9 years ago

        Cool, then I’ll make an extension, and they will have to bribe me too…

  4. standardpull - 9 years ago

    I don’t mind ads – people need to make a buck. But some sites are operated by idiots that have no idea that each ad service added to their site has a real impact to users, and particularly smartphone users.

    There is a diminishing return. I am not interested in a site that shovels ads from 15 to 30 different ad services. If each loads a 500k payload, that’s another 15 MB of data. Stupid. And this happens all the time, even on reputable sites. And it makes the web sites much less reliable, because if just one of the ad services goes wonky, the entire site goes wonky.

    This is not an exaggeration. This is common practice.

    Users demand this kind of filtering due to misuse by non-tech salespeople selling ad space without any kind of oversight for technical sanity. Ignorant web site owners: this is what you’re dumb practices have led to. Only blame yourself and your out-of-control industry colleagues.

  5. Steve Grenier - 9 years ago

    Wonderful. Not having my Safari AdBlock installed on my iPad/iPhone is one of the most annoying things.

  6. PhilBoogie - 9 years ago

    I’d love for this site to have a paywall. No problem to pay a fee and have an ad free experience, which would be way better than having to use ad blockers.

  7. srgmac - 9 years ago

    Awesome!!!

  8. crichton007 - 9 years ago

    I hope this isn’t as half baked as the 3rd party keyboard option they added in iOS 8.

  9. kaelvn - 9 years ago

    Websites like 9to5mac are going to be caught in the crossfire in the fight between Apple and Google: adblock is showing 7 ads on this site right now. How is 9to5mac going to make money, huh?

  10. Hayley Stoddart - 9 years ago

    Our iOS Developers at Degree53 have taken an in depth look into Apple’s announcements this week.

    There were quite a few new improvements that were directly aimed at us Mac/iOS/Watch developers that deserve to be mentioned and analyzed.

    Read more here.. http://www.degree53.com/blog/2015/june/wwdc15-in-depth-review-from-an-ios-developer

  11. James Defranco - 9 years ago

    This is awesome, it’s super annoying that we couldn’t do this in the first place. I love it when big companies open up software for developers, it really helps expand and fix things better. Hopefully they can open up a bit more stuff for us to expand upon in the future.

Author

Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.