Safari Distraction Control

One of my favorite new features of Safari is Distraction Control. Although I usually don’t mind the presence of ads on web pages while browsing, I sometimes want to hide ads or other web page elements when saving a web page to PDF. To do this, click the Page Menu button and then click the “Hide Distracting Items” option as pictured above.

Equally important to know is that Safari remembers the items you’ve asked it to hide, so the next time you visit the same page, those distracting items will remain hidden. Additionally, if other pages on the same web site display the same items in the same way, those items will be hidden too. I learned this the hard way because after hiding distracting items on a certain page, they were hidden site-wide, and I thought that Safari had some kind of browser incompatibility with the web site.

To show hidden items, click the Page Menu button and then click the “Show Hidden Items” option. You can also un-hide distracting items across all web pages. On a Mac, go to Safari > Clear History… and then select the timeframe that you’d like to clear. On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Apps > Safari > Clear History and Website Data and then select the timeframe you’d like to clear.

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.

Overprotective uBlock for Safari

I’ve used uBlock for Safari for many years to block ads, popups, and trackers on my Mac. In fact, I’ve also installed uBlock for Chrome and Firefox for both Mac and Windows. I recall noticing a reduction in ads and popup windows upon installation, and that has been my new baseline browsing experience for quite a while.

Recently I was trying to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Public Health Information Network Vocabulary Access and Distribution System (PHIN VADS) website at https://phinvads.cdc.gov/. Strangely, I was able to visit PHIN VADS on every browser except for Safari on my Mac, where I would receive the following error message:

When trying to troubleshoot, I attempted some of the tips in the If you can’t open a website in Safari on Mac Apple Support page. This included the last suggestion to click and hold the Reload button, then choose Reload Without Content Blockers (also pictured above). However, I was still unable to visit PHIN VADS using Safari. Since the CDC is a federal agency, it is highly unlikely that there would be any nefarious content on the website that would warrant blocking it entirely.

It wasn’t until I disabled the uBlock extension entirely that Safari would let me visit the PHIN VADS website. I then verified that I could re-enable the uBlock extension and simply click “Allow ads on this site” while on PHIN VADS to whitelist the site. So it seems that uBlock not only blocks ads, popups, and trackers, in some cases it entirely prevents visitation of certain websites. Furthermore, reloading a page in Safari without content blockers fails to bypass uBlock. I’m not sure why uBlock is so overprotective in some cases, but if you use it, just remember to try whitelisting a website if it fails to load.

LinkedIn Webpage Using Significant Energy on Safari

While on LinkedIn, I received a message from Safari (version 11.1) at the top of my browser window: "This webpage is using significant energy. Closing it may improve the responsiveness of your Mac."

I had just sent an invitation, and both the webpage and Safari were sitting idle for about a minute before the message was displayed. I am running macOS Sierra 10.12.6. I've never seen this message before. Does anyone know why the LinkedIn webpage would begin using "significant" energy, especially after being idle for a minute?