What would be your recommendation for blocking ads on an android phone? Do you use one and, if so, what’s your 2 cents on what you’re using? Where have you seen the biggest improvement (reduction) if it works well?
Not seeing my particular setup listed yet. Morphe and Firefox with ublock of course. But I also have a pihole running at home and a tailscale connection with the pihole configured as DNS. So I have pihole blocking even on my mobile data connection.
Tailscale was initially setup so I can access Actual Budget when not on my LAN, but pihole on the go is definitely a big plus.
I tried that (tailscale -> pi-hole) but experienced terrible lag and drop-outs while surfing on mobile, probably due to the raspberry pi being overloaded or more likely my son playing Fortnite and saturating the connection
OS ads, website ads or app ads?
- For OS ads, it depends on the manufacturer. Some don’t have ads. For Xiaomi devices, ads can be completely removed by disabling a single app. Avoid anything by Samsung.
- For ads on websites, use Firefox with uBlock.
- App ads are the hardest to remove. You can try blocking ad domains at the OS level, or disable ads in each app’s settings (if they give you that option).
Google always finds a way to bypass adblocking. What worked for me is using firefox with ublock origin. And using apps that don’t have ads in the first place. There are many apps like this on F-droid.
Adaway
NextDNS can provide a similar experience to adaway and similar apps, but without needing an app and with no need to constantly manage anything or ensure an app is running or whatever, it just always works.
Not open source though, but the free plan is more than enough for a single person on all their devices, so for a single phone it should work.
I just use Firefox with uBlock and don’t install apps that have ads in the first place.
For me, the best bang for your buck as far as effort was to just set the DNS Provider to dns.adguard.com. Then use whatever adblocker or vpn solution you want on top of that. Has worked pretty well for me.
I can’t recommend this highly enough, there is one caveat though- it may break some links or hotel wifi login portals. Not a big deal, just switch it off for a second and reload the page, login, and then turn it back on. It’s a quick 30s process to cycle it off so it’s a non issue for me.
This a million times ^
Combine that with FF and UBO and I almost never see an ad.
Also, AdGuard app on android
adaway is the best one, and now supports unrooted phones.
Adguard home blocks most ads on my network. But I’m also using Firefox with ublock on Android.
I use YouTube revanced to block YouTube ads on my phone. SmartTubeNext to block YouTube ads on my tv. So between these, it’s exceptionally rare I see an ad.
It all depends on how you use the internet, and what ads you’re seeing that you want to block.
The ads on YouTube (no account, and used their app) were one of the irritations that made me curious here. I know very little about YouTube relanced… where’d you acquire it through?
You might be interested to know, that a lot of the developers of revanced left the project after some beef with the project lead. they started a new project called morphe which does the same thing but with more frequent updates. https://morphe.software/ for the download
The other replier is right, but since you replied to me, I’ll chime in. To block YouTube ads you basically have 2 options.
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Use something like YouTube revanced, or smart tube next. This has ad blocking and sponsor blocking built in. The other replier went over where to get it and how it works but from my understanding, people are shifting to an app called morphe. I don’t know much about it as revanced is working fine for me, but if you’re starting out with nothing, I’d be looking into morphe
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Use ublock origin on your browser. You should be doing this anyway to block other browser ads. You’ll need to use Firefox or a derivative of Firefox since chrome has massively crippled it.
Thanks! I’ll definitely look into morphe… Yes, I already have UBO enabled on my Firefox browser.
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revanced.app is the correct place to get it iirc.
This will let you download the “revanced manager” app’s .apk . Once installed, the revanced manager app lets you take the .apk of a specific version of the YouTube app and patch it to make the revanced .apk . This enables ad blocking and other features like sponsorblock.
It has to be done this way because hosting prepatched apks is a good way to get sued by Google for violating the DMCA.
it’s exceptionally rare I see an ad.
same here and something about this environment lets me get unreasonably triggered when i do see an ad. lol
Wait, so I should download something in addition to ublock with firefox? I don’t think I see youtube commercials, I only watch a few shows on there and don’t see any ads already lately at least. So it’s the app or whatever on the tv or delivering the youtube to the tv that is advertising?
DNS ad blockers won’t block YouTube ads so for that specific case, you’re limited to apps like Revanced or a browser ad blocker like UBlock Origin (and watching YouTube from your browser). For most all other ads (in your browser or in other apps) a DNS blocker like AdGuard works.
I use TrackerControl for trackers in apps (and as others said Firefox+uBO, NewPipe for Youtube)
Firefox Mobile with uBlock Origin extension. YouTube ReVanced For other apps: Some VPNs are also blocking Ads and Trackers. Proton for example.
Change to YouTube Morphe. Revanced hasn’t been updated for aaaages and their monetisation actions are questionable.
i use personaldnsfilter for adblocking on android
it uses VPN to block domains, you can modify the host file, and it works all the time
I’ve been using this for years, love it
I don’t install any app that has ads, to the extent that I even uninstalled Google Maps and became a pariah that has no Whatsapp. Most apps are from f-droid, I use OSMAND~ from f-droid, Firefox with ublock origin to browse and pipepipe as youtube client. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad on this phone and that’s how I like it.
My DNS filters most of it.
