History of uBlock and Ad Blocking on Safari

Shortly after writing my previous post about uBlock, I discovered a few things.

There is a difference between uBlock Origin and uBlock. I had installed uBlock Origin on my Firefox and Chrome browsers, but I got duped into installing uBlock for Safari. This wiki tells the history behind uBlock which was originally developed by Raymond Hill and used community-maintained block lists. Hill then transferred the uBlock project to Chris Aljoudi, forked the code, and continued developing his own version under the name uBlock Origin. Hill’s uBlock Origin continues to use community-maintained block lists, while Aljoudi’s uBlock was acquired by AdBlock and began allowing Acceptable Ads which are basically ads that are not filtered when publishers pay a fee.

The uBlock application (owned by AdBlock) is hosted on https://ublock.org. However, when attempting to download uBlock for Safari, users are redirected to the Mac App Store and then shown an App Not Available message. My guess is that development has been paused or halted entirely. I also noticed that I had been unable to update my filter list on uBlock. Because of this, and because of the for-profit nature of uBlock, I uninstalled it.

Development of uBlock Origin continues to this day, and the source code is available at https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari. On Safari, the preferred installation method is through the extension gallery. However, starting with version 13 of Safari, uBlock Origin no longer works because Safari 13 deprecates legacy extensions. That being said, uBlock Origin should still work on other supported browsers. See this explanation for more information.

Official uBlock Origin logo

So in summary, for browsers other than Safari, uBlock Origin (not uBlock) continues to be a good choice. For Safari 12 and earlier, you should be able to use uBlock Origin by installing it through the extension gallery. For Safari 13, you’ll need to find an alternative ad blocker. Currently I’m testing out AdGuard for Safari, a free ad blocker that is available in the Mac App Store. Maybe I’ll share my experiences with AdGuard in a future post.