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The Best Ad Blocker for iPhone


iOS 9 introduced “content blockers,” for Safari. These function primarily as ad blockers, but they can also be used to block tracking data and other elements. After weeks of testing and research, we’ve picked 1Blocker as the best of the bunch so far.

Note: While lots of mobile ads are obnoxious, please remember that ads are how sites like us make enough money to run. So unless you want to see all your favorite sites go out of business, we humbly remind you to whitelist the sites you like.

1Blocker

Platform: iPhone/iPad
Price: Free ($2.99 Pro)
Download Page

How to Enable Content Blockers in iOS

Content blockers aren’t enabled by default, and they take a couple steps to set up:

  1. Download your content blocker of choice from the iTunes App Store.

  2. Head into Settings > Safari > Content Blockers and enable the blocker you installed.

As far as enabling the content blockers, that’s all you have to do. However, some apps have individual settings to tweak to block or unblock certain content, so it’s worth hopping into the app to change any settings as well.

Features

  • 7,000 preinstalled blockers

  • Create your own own custom blockers

  • Ton of customization options, including blocking specific tracking widgets, specific advertisers, specific content types, and more

  • Block entire sites, cookies, and specific URLs

  • Whitelisting

Where It Excels

1Blocker is all about tinkering, so you have tons of settings to fiddle around with. The free version simply blocks ads, which is enough for most people. If you upgrade to the $2.99 version, you can choose what’s blocked and what isn’t. This means you can just block ads, block trackers, get rid of social media widgets, block comments, and pretty much anything else. Essentially, you have the freedom to pick and choose what’s blocked, meaning you can customize 1Blocker to your liking. Better, still, if 1Blocker doesn’t block something, you can use the web editor to create your own custom rules and block basically whatever you want. Beyond all that, tests conducted by Brooks Review and The New York Times showed that 1Blocker was consistently in the top tier of ad blockers for both improving web page load speed and cutting down on data consumption.

Where It Falls Short

The only common complaint is the price, but while you do have options for free ad blockers (more on those below), 1Blocker is the only one that gives you total control over what’s blocked while also offering a whitelisting option to let through the sites you want.

The Competition

You have an insane amount of choices for different ad blockers, so we can’t possibly cover all the competition. However, a few stand out more than others. For free ad blockers, Refine (Free) is one of your best options. You can customize which blockers run, add new blockers, create special triggers so you can’t go to certain web sites, and easily whitelist any sites you want. If you don’t want to pay for 1Blocker, Refine is the best free option we tested.

Purify (99¢) is another popular ad blocker and consistently is one of the fastest, beating out even 1Blocker on page load times in some tests. While you can choose to block ads, comments, and certain file types, Purify doesn’t have a ton of additional options.

Crystal (99¢), Adamant ($1.99), and Blockbear (99¢) are all also worthy alternatives, though each takes a simplistic approach and don’t offer much in the way of options. You can turn on ad blockers and that’s about it, though Blockbear at least has a whitelisting option. They get the job done, but don’t expect a ton of options.