Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

Just bought and tried (in this order): Crystal, Purify and Peace. Each has features to like. Crystal has a great price and is the only one to let you report an ad not blocked or broken page so that the ad block list can be updated. Purify lets you block scripts and images on top of font-blocking options also in Peace. Crystal missed an ad that Purify (and Peace) caught, but Peace was the only one that seriously removed all the cruft causing slowdowns, even Google+ news site pop ups and like button pinned banners from The Verge in addition to blocking ads. So my recommendations are Crystal for price, Peace for well, exactly what it says on the tin, and Purify if you'd like to block images and scripts also. Check screenshots of each for the latest on their preference panels.

PSA: If any content blocker is breaking a page you can touch the refresh button in mobile safari for 2 seconds and an option to reload the page without content blockers will appear.

See also &quot;Peace&quot; by Marco Arment which uses data from Ghostery (and shutup.css... removing comments from sites like HN) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;peace.land&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;peace.land&#x2F;</a>

I am curious how this will impact the web. Ads are the only revenue stream for most of the sites. Blocking ads is good for user experience but when you think from publishers site how will they survive? &quot;I like ads because I can support people I like without even spending a dime&quot; said one of my friends. I cannot agree more because there are plenty of people on mid and small scale try to earn living with the content they provide.

I&#x27;m probably getting Blockr (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blockr-app.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blockr-app.com&#x2F;</a> , .99€) just for the option to block the idiotic cookie warning overlays brought by the &quot;cookie law&quot;. The rest of the options looks tempting too, specially social buttons blocker.<p>Btw, if someone&#x27;s interested in the same cookie warning blocking using uBlock&#x2F;ABP, here&#x27;s a cool list: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;r4vi&#x2F;block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;r4vi&#x2F;block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list</a>

<i>&quot;This app is not compatible with your device&quot;</i><p>iPad (first generation with retina screen, I think), running iOS 9. What gives?

Intentional or not, allowing ad blocking on the mobile web should push content creators that rely on ad revenue to develop native applications. This seems like a double win for Apple.

This looks like its nice and simple, but does anyone know if there are any iOS9&#x2F;El Capitan content blockers that support sync&#x27;d granular management of the actual block list?

Just wow. I have used Adblock on desktop before and didn&#x27;t realize how much difference it does on mobile. On desktop it just removes clutter but on mobile it truly changes the whole browsing experience. This will be huge. Almost none of my non-techie friends use Adblock on desktop but everyone will be using an iOS blocker. This will hurt sites big time, and I feel sorry for sites that weren&#x27;t using the big bad ad networks but still get blocked (whether that happens I&#x27;m not sure). The question is -- is it too late to go back and make advertising &quot;right&quot; now? Will sites that use non-intrusive and non-tracking ads be just as blocked as those who do, or does these blockers give no incentive to improve, only to circumvent?

This makes me wish we had extensions in Chrome on Android. uBlock would be very welcome.

There is also an app from the ublock guy but it costs about 4$&#x2F;€. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.purify-app.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.purify-app.com&#x2F;</a>

its not Crystals fault, but its disappointing that this kind of ad blocking is unavailable for 32bit devices, like iPhone 5&#x2F;5c (and below).

Finally. Will disconnect.me soon provide an iOS Safari plugin?<p>edit: more specified to iOS.

Can any one point to a rule set for this or other IOS blockers. Interested to take a look. Do they use much customization for mobile ads or are they just using the same lists as ABP?

Does it actually work? (yes I enabled it in settings)<p>I tried arstechnica.com and it&#x27;s still showing ads. With Mercury (which always had its own ad blocker) there are no ads.

So when will apple add the OS level ad blocker for ads and tracking in apps. What&#x27;s special about blocking web ads and tracking?

I was expecting more from Crystal, given the pre-release press it was stirring up. No whitelist? Plus really ropey looking UI.

Is anyone working on a machine learning ad blocker?

oh my lord

Received their &#x27;Out Now&#x27; email yesterday, after signing up from the post here on HN regarding the app and its beta testing phase. Don&#x27;t have a problem with what I received, in fact it was something I was hoping to play with after installing the iOS9 GM, so was very happy to be notified very shortly after its release. What I wasn&#x27;t keen on however, was the use of emoji&#x27;s in the subject. This instantly got deleted by myself due to their appearance at the beginning of the subject line. It was only a split second after I&#x27;d hit delete that I thought I caught a glimpse of &#x27;Crystal&#x27; or at least a word of interest.<p>Is this now a thing, emoji&#x27;s in email subjects?

Is it just me or does it seem Apple is trying to put a hurt on Google and in turn hurt the web simultaneously. Safari has so many awful bugs that it&#x27;s reminding me of the days of when you had to develop specifically for IE6.<p>Such tactics are reminiscent of when Microsoft ruled the land and well that didnt turn out so great for MS.