
Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker - JarekS
http://crystalapp.co
======
lstamour
Just bought and tried (in this order): Crystal, Purify and Peace. Each has
features to like. Crystal has a great price and is the only one to let you
report an ad not blocked or broken page so that the ad block list can be
updated. Purify lets you block scripts and images on top of font-blocking
options also in Peace. Crystal missed an ad that Purify (and Peace) caught,
but Peace was the only one that seriously removed all the cruft causing
slowdowns, even Google+ news site pop ups and like button pinned banners from
The Verge in addition to blocking ads. So my recommendations are Crystal for
price, Peace for well, exactly what it says on the tin, and Purify if you'd
like to block images and scripts also. Check screenshots of each for the
latest on their preference panels.

~~~
fredsir
I guess that a fart app should probably not cost anything since it's quite
useless, but I do believe that it's a problem that on day one of a whole new
App Store category, the first app launched, Crystal (it appeared hours before
Purify and Peace for me anyways) is a free app. That's how you make mobile
apps an unsustainable business.

I don't know how much work has gone into making these content blocker apps,
but I bet it has taken some time - time that in any "normal" business would be
charged for, and I think mobile apps creators should charge more for their
apps too. In my experience, there are two types of mobile apps consumers.
Those that won't pay for an app, whether it costs $1, $10 or $20, and those
that will, and I think it would be healthier for the ecosystem to cater at
least as much to the latter group as the former, but I don't think that's
currently the case.

It's a race to the bottom, folks.

~~~
Drakim
You assume that every app developer is out to make money. This is not more
true than that every PC application developer is out to make money. Some
people make free software and gives it away for free. That's not a race to the
bottom, unless you think Linux being free is a race to the bottom against
Windows.

~~~
vbezhenar
For some reason AppStore has surprisingly low amount of free software. It's
either free with ads, free with in-app purchases or paid. Or free software
missing marketing and it's hard to find it in AppStore or popular ratings.

Is there some compilation of free software links?

~~~
frou_dh
It costs money to join the Apple Developer Program so it's probably in
peoples' minds to at least recoup that.

------
lukeholder
PSA: If any content blocker is breaking a page you can touch the refresh
button in mobile safari for 2 seconds and an option to reload the page without
content blockers will appear.

~~~
joeblau
Thanks for that top tip! Just tried it on Bloomberg and it worked.

------
Maxious
See also "Peace" by Marco Arment which uses data from Ghostery (and
shutup.css... removing comments from sites like HN)
[https://peace.land/](https://peace.land/)

~~~
robin_reala
One thing I like about Ghostery is the ability to block just beacons, tracking
scripts etc while leaving ads available. Is this something Peace can do?

~~~
kennydude
Doesn't appear so. The options in the app are:

* Block ads and trackers * Block social widgets * Block external fonts * Hide comments

~~~
robin_reala
OK, thanks. Will contact the dev to see if it’s planned functionality.

------
bbayer
I am curious how this will impact the web. Ads are the only revenue stream for
most of the sites. Blocking ads is good for user experience but when you think
from publishers site how will they survive? "I like ads because I can support
people I like without even spending a dime" said one of my friends. I cannot
agree more because there are plenty of people on mid and small scale try to
earn living with the content they provide.

~~~
stephenr
So use an ad network that doesn't unnecessarily track me across the entire
web, destroy my battery life, and make reading content (particularly on
mobile) a game of 'find the article' amongst the shit storm of ads.

The number of things that everyday sites embed in their pages is phenomenal.
The Ghostery extension gives a good idea about how much crap gets loaded.

In an article _about_ content blockers, [http://www.imore.com/and-hour-safari-
content-blockers-and-im...](http://www.imore.com/and-hour-safari-content-
blockers-and-imore) has 13 separate, third-party scripts/etc trying to load.

6 tagged as 'analytics', 4 tagged as 'advertising', 3 tagged as 'social
widgets'

That is a ridiculous amount of extra requests, extra data, and of course,
tracking.

The advertising (and since the obsession with 'cloud' or 'SAAS', analytics
too) industry has been fucking end-users for YEARS. Now users have a credible
way to fight back, and suddenly it's "not fair?".

If you want advertising to fund your site/blog/whatever, use an ad network
that doesn't try to digitally fuck me every time I visit your site.

edit: grammar

~~~
tomtang0514
You have no idea about ad network at all. "unnecessarily track"? Tracking is
the only way to make the ad relevant to you and increase the ad's value so you
actually see fewer ads and those ads fund better content. Without any
tracking, you gonna see at least tripled amount of ads on the most popular
websites today in order to generate same amount of revenue. And BTW,
everything between "you land on a webpage" and "ad network decided which ad to
serve" happens in about 100ms or less, like you can really notice it?!
Complain about ads when you actually pay for subscription rather than asking
for "workaround links" when you try to read a WSJ article posted on HN next
time.

~~~
stephenr
If your site has recipes, cooking tips etc, you _don 't need_ to track my
activity across the web, to know that I'm interested in cooking, and may want
to buy cooking related items. Magazine based advertising has worked on this
concept for literally _decades_.

As for your little quip about WSJ links. Do you mean this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10015496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10015496)
?

> I can't read the article because its paywalled

I never asked for a "workaround". Honestly the only reason I _wanted_ to see
the article is to identify if the article is as ridiculous as the title
implied, so why would I buy a subscription for a publisher that puts out shit
like that?

~~~
tomtang0514
That's exactly why I said you don't understand what targeted advertisement can
do. Let's talk about 3 concepts:

1) Relevance. Take your cooking website example, say if that recipes has
chicken in it. Then the magazine method can show you an ad about local
supermarket for you to buy chicken. Then how do they know if you "probably"
prefer walmart or wholefoods or local farmer's market? What if you are an
organic guy? (which means you probably prefer wholefoods) Traditional magazine
method doesn't make the result relevant enough for today's online advertising
standard.

2) Feedback. As a brand who wanna do an online campaign, how do I know if my
advertisement works? Today's advertiser no longer count on clicks, they count
on impression. They don't need you to click to ad. They just want to make sure
you see it. How do they if you didn't block to ad? How do they know if you
didn't go to other tabs when their 15 second youtube ad is playing? That means
at least 1 additional request send out from your browser. Usually it's more
because they wanna know if you watched half of the video or the whole video.
Things above don't have to be done with tracking you profile, but the other
things does. For example, how to the advertisers know if they reach their
target audience? If I'm selling the new mustang how do I know if I show the ad
to ford people instead of chevy people? It's called on target percentage and
it's one of the top metrics advertisers care about.

3) Availability. In many situations, there's just no ad available that
actually relevant to the content. Then it's better for advertisers to show you
something that may relevant to you instead of something completely random or
no ad at all.

Your magazine method has works for decades doesn't mean it will continue to
work in the future. Does magazine itself still work?

BTW, when I raise the WSJ thing I didn't target you specifically and I have no
idea you had that comment you posted before. But as you said, you (and
probably most people) won't pay for subscription for such ridiculous
publication. Then advertisement is the way for you to read it freely so you
can identify if the article is ridiculous or not. Or maybe just don't read it
and comment by title?

~~~
stephenr
I don't care what they "can do". It's fucking creepy and I'll never accept it.

A site can just as easily say "show me ads for <page specific tags> as hard-
coded "recipes", and knowing where I shop just goes into the creepy factor
even more.

~~~
tomtang0514
Okay if I understand correctly, you just hate targeting ads with tracking not
any ads right? Then instead of using ad blocker, you can opt out from cookie
tracking on NAI so all participating companies of NAI (which covers almost all
major players in the ad network industry) will not use your cookie.

~~~
stephenr
No, it isn't _just_ privacy invasion that bothers me. Ridiculous screen-
covering ads, bandwidth hogging, battery draining etc.

But forget all that - your suggestion, to avoid a tracking cookie from the
various companies in what is frankly an industry with a terrible track record
for doing the right thing, is to use the NAI "don't track me" "feature"...
Which requires that I accept cookies from _any_ domain and let them put a
cookie on my device?

Are you aware of how stupid I would have to be, to believe that works?

~~~
tomtang0514
I work for one of the ad network. And I know the people in my company who
implemented that specific piece of code for that specific opt-out feature.
It's one of the most safety-critical feature we have so we do regression test
before every single release regardless if we modified that code or not. So I'm
pretty sure that opt-out feature works. Because if it doesn't, someone gonna
sue us.

I find it really hard to communicate with you because before we even start
this discussion you seems already tagged the entire ad industry as an "evil
empire" who try to steal your personal information all the time. The ad
industry is not an angle for sure. It's just a business that try to make
money, like any other business. Intentionally ruin people's life is not the
interest of any mature business. Believe or not, doing things that make people
hate ads is the last thing the ad industry wants. Because the more everyone
hate ads, the less effective those ad campaigns will be, and the less ad
companies get paid. Most of the problems with ads today are not introduced in
favor of anybody, it's just not as easy as you might think to find a overall
better way. Do you recall how many years it has been for people to actually
produce a practical substitution for gas engine since everyone realize it's
messing up our planet?

In the end, I'm interest to hear your vision on how to fund high quality
online contents today without the profit of targeted advertisement.

~~~
stephenr
> I find it really hard to communicate with you because before we even start
> this discussion you seems already tagged the entire ad industry as an "evil
> empire" who try to steal your personal information all the time.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its a fucking
duck. The Ad industry doesn't _try_ to steal peoples information all the time,
they _successfully_ create _very detailed_ profiles on people. You yourself
admitted this when claiming that "only targeted advertising is effective".

> So I'm pretty sure that opt-out feature works.

...for the ad networks who are members of NAI _and_ who abide by its
guidelines... by requiring a cookie on every device I use, and requiring that
every device is set to allow third-party cookies, which further increases the
chances for me to be tracked online.

Ad this point, I don't _need_ to demonstrate the shady practices of the ad
industry - they do that well enough by themselves.

I don't care if you work for an ad company, and frankly I don't care if the
adoption of content blocking software causes your employer to go out of
business and you to lose your job. You _chose_ to work for that company,
knowing full-well what they do.

The ad industry made choices about how it would operate its business, and is
now paying the consequences. Same goes for you, as an individual.

~~~
tomtang0514
Through out this entire conversation I was listen to your problems with ads
and explain the ones you might misunderstand. You just simply don't believe in
anything positive. And after all this you are now taking it personally?

------
tdkl
I'm probably getting Blockr ([http://blockr-app.com/](http://blockr-app.com/)
, .99€) just for the option to block the idiotic cookie warning overlays
brought by the "cookie law". The rest of the options looks tempting too,
specially social buttons blocker.

Btw, if someone's interested in the same cookie warning blocking using
uBlock/ABP, here's a cool list: [https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-
shit-list](https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list)

------
Someone
_" This app is not compatible with your device"_

iPad (first generation with retina screen, I think), running iOS 9. What
gives?

~~~
LeoNatan25
Content blocking requires a 64-bit CPU.

~~~
heinrich5991
Interesting. Why is that?

~~~
LeoNatan25
Ask Apple :) See this tweet:
[https://twitter.com/awfulben/status/638510622167052288](https://twitter.com/awfulben/status/638510622167052288)

Apparently, content blockers work on 32-bit CPUs, but Apple is restricting
them on the store to 64-bit only. So you can go the BlockParty + EasyList
route:
[https://github.com/krishkumar/BlockParty](https://github.com/krishkumar/BlockParty)

It works very well.

~~~
Armand_Grillet
Another open-source iOS 9 content blocker here, using EasyList and
EasyPrivacy:
[https://github.com/ArmandGrillet/Adios](https://github.com/ArmandGrillet/Adios)
(I'm the guy behind this project).

------
perishabledave
Intentional or not, allowing ad blocking on the mobile web should push content
creators that rely on ad revenue to develop native applications. This seems
like a double win for Apple.

~~~
aqwwe
if Apple allows blocking of ads on the web, it should allow blocking of ads on
native apps also...

------
stephenr
This looks like its nice and simple, but does anyone know if there are any
iOS9/El Capitan content blockers that support sync'd granular management of
the actual block list?

~~~
tdkl
Safari Blocker: [http://blog.appgrounds.com/safari-blocker-
preview/](http://blog.appgrounds.com/safari-blocker-preview/)

It's in App Store review and should be out shortly.

------
alkonaut
Just wow. I have used Adblock on desktop before and didn't realize how much
difference it does on mobile. On desktop it just removes clutter but on mobile
it truly changes the whole browsing experience. This will be huge. Almost none
of my non-techie friends use Adblock on desktop but everyone will be using an
iOS blocker. This will hurt sites big time, and I feel sorry for sites that
weren't using the big bad ad networks but still get blocked (whether that
happens I'm not sure). The question is -- is it too late to go back and make
advertising "right" now? Will sites that use non-intrusive and non-tracking
ads be just as blocked as those who do, or does these blockers give no
incentive to improve, only to circumvent?

------
buffoon
This makes me wish we had extensions in Chrome on Android. uBlock would be
very welcome.

~~~
HarshaThota
Why not give Firefox a try then?

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox&hl=en)

~~~
buffoon
Three reasons: I want my stuff synced with my desktop running Chrome and it's
horrible to use and drinks battery.

(I have already tried it)

~~~
Yetanfou
Is your device rooted? If so, install AdAway (from the fdroid repo) or a
similar host-based blocker. This takes care of a large part of the ad-related
misery. I do run Firefox (well, Fennec, really, minus the obnoxious bits which
Mozilla has been slipping in recently) on a 4 year old Motorola Defy. The
battery lasts for about 5 days so I don't think that bit about FF 'drink[ing]
battery' is correct, at least not in my case. I do not have uBlock (or any
other blocker) installed as the hosts-based solution is sufficient for now.

~~~
buffoon
No it's not rooted and I can't deploy our device policy on rooted devices
(this is a company phone; a moto g 3rd gen).

I had terrible battery problems on a moto g2 about a year ago which is what
I'm basing my opinion on so that may be invalid now.

~~~
Nexxxeh
Oh man, what a difference a year makes. I gave up on FF when it was a freshly
laid turd. I tried it again a few months back on a recommendation from HN.
Whoa. They've managed to polish it into a diamond.

You'd have to prize Firefox and uBlock (on my first gen Moto G) out of my cold
dead hands.

~~~
buffoon
Downloading now. You have at least persuaded me to have another go at it :)

~~~
Nexxxeh
Load in uBlock, and if you use it, Lastpass.

I browsed The Verge site just fine. (The images took a little longer to load
than I expected, but I checked and same happens on the desktop. So it's a
shitty ISP/CDN/Optimization problem rather than a browser one.)

------
prince_boa
There is also an app from the ublock guy but it costs about 4$/€.
[https://www.purify-app.com/](https://www.purify-app.com/)

~~~
pvg
That's an app from the guy who took over uBlock on Safari, the uBlock guy is
the guy who wrote uBlock and not the same person.

~~~
LoSboccacc
so, uhm, is him reputable? I'd hate to install and ad blocker only to make the
problem worse.

~~~
jd3
in terms of skill, the current ublock maintainer seems to be a kid with little
to no skill who is not updating the project and instead milking it for money.
I'm sure the iOS implementation is sound though.

------
ratfacemcgee
its not Crystals fault, but its disappointing that this kind of ad blocking is
unavailable for 32bit devices, like iPhone 5/5c (and below).

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Indeed. I find it curious that it's not available for "performance reasons" \-
surely rendering an ad takes more CPU than blocking one?

~~~
tdkl
You can compile and sideload an open source content blocker on a 32bit device.
But performance on some sites is slower then without blocking because of the
regex performance difference, it's almost 50% slower. I'd quote the statement
from a dev on reddit, but can't remember where it was.

~~~
msephton
what regex? content blocking compiles the source regex to byte code which is
executed natively.

the 32-bit hang up is because of performance of compiling the rules, not
executing them.

------
methou
Finally. Will disconnect.me soon provide an iOS Safari plugin?

edit: more specified to iOS.

------
codewithcheese
Can any one point to a rule set for this or other IOS blockers. Interested to
take a look. Do they use much customization for mobile ads or are they just
using the same lists as ABP?

------
chris-at
Does it actually work? (yes I enabled it in settings)

I tried arstechnica.com and it's still showing ads. With Mercury (which always
had its own ad blocker) there are no ads.

~~~
interpol_p
I had to kill Safari and reload pages a few times before it started working.
Once it did, though, the speed difference was the most obvious thing about it.

------
greggman
So when will apple add the OS level ad blocker for ads and tracking in apps.
What's special about blocking web ads and tracking?

~~~
monochromatic
Apps use Apple's ad system. Web doesn't.

------
msephton
I was expecting more from Crystal, given the pre-release press it was stirring
up. No whitelist? Plus really ropey looking UI.

------
wtvanhest
Is anyone working on a machine learning ad blocker?

------
danvayn
oh my lord

------
graystevens
Received their 'Out Now' email yesterday, after signing up from the post here
on HN regarding the app and its beta testing phase. Don't have a problem with
what I received, in fact it was something I was hoping to play with after
installing the iOS9 GM, so was very happy to be notified very shortly after
its release. What I wasn't keen on however, was the use of emoji's in the
subject. This instantly got deleted by myself due to their appearance at the
beginning of the subject line. It was only a split second after I'd hit delete
that I thought I caught a glimpse of 'Crystal' or at least a word of interest.

Is this now a thing, emoji's in email subjects?

~~~
wanderfowl
Language change, oh horror of horrors.

------
LargeCompanies
Is it just me or does it seem Apple is trying to put a hurt on Google and in
turn hurt the web simultaneously. Safari has so many awful bugs that it's
reminding me of the days of when you had to develop specifically for IE6.

Such tactics are reminiscent of when Microsoft ruled the land and well that
didnt turn out so great for MS.

~~~
stephenr
Apple is continuing it's now well-publicised push for enhanced/improved
privacy for users of it's devices and services.

Apple don't provide _any_ content blocking out of the box, they provide the
ability for _users_ to install a plugin/extension _of their own choosing_ if
they wish.

You don't have to use this to block google ads, or google analytics if you
don't want to. But many people will, because the amount of data Google
collects (or attempts to collect) every day is fucking scary to a _lot_ of
people.

