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?
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
Firefox Mobile with uBlock Origin extension. YouTube ReVanced For other apps: Some VPNs are also blocking Ads and Trackers. Proton for example.
I use TrackerControl for trackers in apps (and as others said Firefox+uBO, NewPipe for Youtube)
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?
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.
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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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
adaway is the best one, and now supports unrooted phones.
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.
Control D or Adguard DNS.
Block ads where? In apps? I don’t have a stock android phone so I can’t tell you about improvements. But Rethink DNS blocks whatever u choose hence apps can’t show you ads anymore: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.celzero.bravedns/
I use wgtunnel to stay connected to my home network to take advantage of dns filtering. Also have ublock origin installed in firefox mobile. Most of the activity is from blocking telemetry. The majority of apps I use on a daily basis are foss and the rare play store app is either a paid game or an app for a service like uber.
If you’re not selfhosting, using one of the online options will probably work just as well.
Adaway
If you are rooted adaway works great
Yeah im not quite sure what OP is going for here. Without root you wont be able to block ads system wide.
Simply looking to see what methods people here use to reduce ads. I’ve not gotten into advanced user access with my phone though.
It would appear that they’re trying to learn from a community by asking questions, which I agree is a remarkably stupid thing to do.
In general i do like others and don’t really use many apps that have ads.
I used to use TrackerControl which works great, but acts as a vpn to get around root restrictions that stop standard ad-blocking, and now I use a permanent VPN to my home network over Wireguard, so I can’t use TrackerControl any more (or any other non-root system-wide ad blocker).
I got around this issue by setting up a work profile, and installing the few apps that I still use that have ads on the work profile, and having TrackerControl installed on the work profile. That way… Can have always-on VPN on main profile, and few apps with ads blocked on the work profile.
I use Grayjay for YouTube, auto-blocks ads. Browser has its own ad blocker.
personaldnsfilter (yes, in a single word): https://github.com/IngoZenz/personaldnsfilter It can use Hagezi lists (an many more), is free and open source.
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.
What ads are you trying to remove?
For a browser, I use FireFox mobile with the uBlock Origin and NoScript extensions. Those two eliminate most ads while browsing, though NoScript does require extra effort to allow some pages to function.
For games and other apps, I try to stick to stuff which doesn’t have ads. This usually means paying for the stuff you use or sticking to pure open-source solutions. However, I still have some apps which have ads. For that there I use PiHole as a DNS at home, which eliminates most of them.I could probably do more to avoid the few ads I do see, but at some point I just accept that advertisement is an inevitable consequence of our economy and just move on with life.
