Wednesday, October 11, 2017

System wide ad blocking with AdBlock for iOS

After Apple's recent policy change, all VPN-based adblocker in the appstore, including Adblock for iOS have been banned by Apple, which was a dissapointment to all users, but the developers of Adblock have found a way around this with their most recent v4.1 update release which introduces a combination of a new DNS proxy based blocking mechanism and a Safari content blocker. On top of that, the v4.1 release now includes the ability to export/import rules and lists from and to your device, along with a new module that lets us import rules straight from a .txt file instead of having to copy paste anything.

If you're already an Adblock user before the v4 update and you had icloud enabled for adblock, then according to the developers you should already have the previous rules in adblock imported to the DNS proxy rules. If not however, the video below will show you how to import rules from a raw .txt file, I've gotten adblock's official list that they use as a default here so we'll use that:

Updated domain list : goo.gl/rs8xDQ








The second new feature that was implemented is the ability to share your DNS rules with other adblock users using the export/import function. Say, you have created a list that works very well to block ads, you can now share that entire list with another user with just a few taps instead of having to copy every single rules over. Or you can simply use this feature as a back up for your rules, in case you lose your custom rules list for whatever reason. This feature allows for either the entire list of rules that you have or just certain groups. You can share the list via email and adblock will automatically import all the rules from the exported file :)  The video below will demonstrate how this function works:

*in the video I after exporting the list, I deleted all of my rules in order to show how they will get imported once again, this is not a required step.




With that said, Adblock should now be working really well with the new rules, I hope that this tutorial have helped you. :)