#Adguard safari extension code
It had fewer rules to apply than before.Īpple was never criticized for doing what Google didn't even doĪt the time, extension developers, including most ad blockers, migrated their code and didn't say a peep. On the other side, when Apple rolled out the new Content Blocker API, it enforced a maximum limit of 50,000 rules for each new extension that wanted to block content inside Safari. The company was immediatelly attacked for trying to "kill ad blockers," and after months of criticism, Google eventually backed down on its initial plan and settled on a higher limit ranging from 90,000 to 120,000, a number that many extension developers, and especially those managing ad blockers, still consider insufficient. Google wanted to limit the maximum rules an extension could pass to Chrome to 30,000, which many Chrome extension developers said was extremely low, and wouldn't even begin to accommodate the likes of ad blockers, parental control or traffic inspection extensions. Instead, the extension will deploy a set of "content blocking rules" and the browser will do the blocking without the extension seeing any user data. They will limit how extensions intercept and block web requests by preventing the extension from interacting with the web request directly. App Extensions and Content Blockerįor Apple users, it all started a few years back when the company announced App Extensions, a mechanism through which apps could extend their functionality into other apps.īoth Chrome and Safari will use a new extensions backend.
Over the course of the last year and a half, Apple has effectively neutered ad blockers in Safari, something that Google has been heavily criticized all this year.īut unlike Google, Apple never received any flak, and came out of the whole process with a reputation of caring about users' privacy, rather than attempting to "neuter ad blockers." The reasons may be Apple's smaller userbase, the fact that changes rolled out across years instead of months, and the fact that Apple doesn't rely on ads for its profits, meaning there was no ulterior motive behind its ecosystem changes. There's been much said about Google's supposed plans to limit the power of ad blockers in Chrome, but something similar has already happened in Safari, and not that many people have noticed, let alone criticize Apple.
10 dangerous app vulnerabilities to watch out for (free PDF)