Ghostery – Privacy Ad Blocker Reviews

by Fiji Fugitive

If this app is not enabled for a given site, clicking on the icon returns:

"This extension would be able to read and alter webpages and see your browsing history on this website. This could include sensitive information, including passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards."

Their web site doesn't explain how to "do" anything. It just assumes that the UI is self-explanitory. Perhaps it is, but with the above warning not explained anywhere, it isn't something I'm all that interested in trying out.

by Andie00

Now it doesn't appear to do much. It's slow on my M1 Mac 16gb. UI is worse, there's no "pause", there's a dumb circle that doesn't tell me what I want to know, just worse in everything. I was a big fan and recommended it to others but no longer can.

by JMGNYC32

this app Lite used to work great. With it's latest release it is a mess. There's no way to change setting by website and it really slows down a number of sites, including major ones. Maybe the next version will improve but right now I've had to disable it.

by Cheleball

I'm not sure at what point it changed, but it has been many months since this browser extension did anything. It doesn't block ads, and as far as I can tell, it isn't stopping trackers. It has completely given up the ghost, and I am finally giving up on it being fixed and moving on to other options.

by Ku4hx

Monterey 12.1. Once open, Ghostery does nothing. The "Open Prefreneces" button does not work which means Ghostery cannot function at all. Very disapointing. The developers have had plenty of time to make Ghostery Monterey ready and still is making excuse about what Apple says it's going to do. An app should either work or be taken down; there should never be any "IIt's not my fault" statements. The developer is responsibile for making his product work with an Apple OS, not the other way around.

by Gamboler

Don't want to pick on Ghostery , but browsing, including typing in search engines and web forms started to lag big time. Disabling this app fixed the problem. So, I guess it needs some fixing.

by O'Dell...

I've made the mistake of purchasing Ghostery and now I find my information on the black web Ghostery needs to be banned from the Apple ecosystem Ghostery is a thief it is a criminal whoever created this is stealing your information whenever you type in anything personal on any website it does not block anything more than steal your information and sell it to others do not trust Ghostery.:.

by NikLinna

this app 5 shows all the trackers, and I can enable and disable them as I choose. This version doesn't show me which trackers are present, which makes it essentially useless to me. It also puts 2 extensions into Safari, this app Lite UI and this app Lite Content Blocker, which is unnecessarily confusing, especially since the names get clipped by the narrow column listing extensions. So on the one hand we have the usual trend toward dumbed-down Playskool user interfaces, coupled with confusing and arbitrary-seeming complications. And of course, it now has to be installed through the horrendous App Store....

by DLDLJ#93982

this app Lite worked great. This new app is buggy, doesn't save site preferences, and is overall unusable.

by NormMaple

But Ghostery is garbage now. Look elsewhere for your ad blocking and tracker protection. Real shame this is...

by Pugdogg

does absolutely nothing and they have the gall to offer you absurdly priced addons?

by Concernec_user

How is it recommended by apple if it doesn't work.

by ChicagoMusic312

Used to work great, now its horrible

by Vogelmeister

For the past month, I have been perplexed with crashing of the Finder and Notes. Usually rock-solid, I couldn't figure out what was happening. I change USB cables for hard drives, I disconnected peripherals, I even reinstalled the system from scratch, but I couldn't find out what was causing it. Finally, I did some research on the internet and found that pkd crashing could cause the issue. Sure enough when I was experiencing a crash, I loaded up activity monitor and at the top of the list was pkd. After killing the process everything worked as normal, but suddenly i noticed webpages were showing adds again. Restarting safari (and reloading this app) caused pkd to peak again crashing finder. I found the culprit. I removed it from my system and have been crash free since. Other Safari extensions work just fine, this one is no longer good at all.

by Long Time User, No Longer

Been using Ghostery for years.
The extension was removed for my Mac.
Tried to reinstal, must pay, so opted for the 4.99/month to try it. Installer will not let me past the subscription screen.

So ap is no longer free with in app purchase.

by DGBooster

The icon disappeared, and I when launch it it says to open safari prefernces, but it is not in the extension list. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled. Still no change

by MiNick

I had been experiencing problems with my browsing. After a lot of troubleshooting I decided to reinstall macOS about a week ago. The moment I installed this extension i started to experience the same problems. There is not much to configure, so I have used their extensions in all my browsers and everytime I help someone with their computers I recommend they install it... not anymore, at least for safari. I dont think there is a problem with the Chrome extension. :(

by Ladbroke

Removes "detailed view", which I used to allow ads (but not trackers) to sites I wanted to support. 

It's also incredibly slow to open its context menu on Safari, which again doesn't provide any additional informaiton.

The great thing about this app was that it was simple to use, but offered more detailed control if a user wanted it. I'll stick to this app Classic until it's no longer supported, or Lite offers more control over individual trackers.

by Nihil72

I run this app in Safari and Firefox and it's simply not as useful in Safari. It functions faster and more thoroughly in Firefox and while Apple claims to be looking out for users' privacy, I'm not sure how allowing some ads (and, I assume, some trackers) to continue functioning in their browser does users any good.

by Gen. Protectionfault

The old this app plugin allowed fine-tuning which trackers were allowed, and which were not, in case they broke the page in some fundamental way. But with the new this app plugin, it’s either everything or nothing, which means you have to choose between having a broken page or allowing third parties to track you on the site. I hope this can be fixed in the next release.

by Pmdworks

While uBlock Origin may have been the best ad block plugin for Safari prior to the new App Store method, GhostryLite is almost as good. I've tried AdBlock, AdBlock Plus, Ka-Block, etc. and all either break websites are or too slow to be useable as they load complex sites with lots of ads. AdBlock for Safari is my second choice after Ghostry. Ghostry is extremely fast and accurate. The only thing that could make Ghostry better is to do a better job of collapsing blocked ads which currently show mostly as empty squares taking up space on the screen, otherwise nearly perfect! For those overly concerned about security and the pugins access to your private web info (as I am), you can simply enable the 'content blocker' extension in Safari and leave unchecked the 'UI' extension, Ghostry will continue to work just fine this way - note this is true for all ad blockers using the new extention method that have both an engine/blocker and a UI extension.

by JacksonWrath

I love it overall! It feels a lot faster, and I've not had any problems.

I do really miss the ability to whitelist individual trackers from the in-browser popup. This made temporarily enabling widgets on websites possible when something wasn't working. Now I have to whitelist the entire site if something isn't working, which is far from ideal.

Please bring this back if possible, and keep up the great work!

by Jojibro

Had some update issues with this "lite" app earlier this year, but after trying several others ie., AdBlock Max, AdGuard For Safari, Ka-Block!, etc, finally came back to this one.
Perhaps, not the most full-featured, but if you value simplicity & functionality above other considerations, this should do it.
Worth testing on the pages you know the best to see what it actually does or doesn't...

by Billabong68

its really good once you get it set up. It totally blocks every ad!

by Collin Luke

Glad it is finally working again on macOS 12.1

by AhmadMD1990

I’m obsessive about adblocking and have been for years. I create and customize my own rules on PC - so i’m not a novice.

this app REALLY surprised me with this new release for IOS. It used to be amongst the worst and now it is better than even the paid apps including my usual go-to, adguard and 1blocker.

It’s simpler to use AND blocks more - I tested them side by side and saw for myself.

by 137nickname137

No issues to report. Just smooth, great ad blocking. Tested with a website designed to test adblockers and it blocked 99% of the ads, with the exlclusion of some very difficult to block ones.

In real world usage, it's been flawless. Very little performance draw, and just does it's job without any fuss.

by Jaeguar

I have been waiting a long time for this to become available checking your website daily because when I updated to Mojave for some reason it uninstalled my this app extension. I have only had this installed 10 minutes and it works PERFECTLY just like the old this app. Im so happy. I will report any issues if any come up!

Keep up the great work. You need a donation tab.

by JeepinSox

After I updated to the beta version of Mojave I found out that the old this app wouldn't work ith it. I tried a few of the other addblockers out there and nothing compared to this app! As soon as they sent out the announce,ment that it was ready to go, I removed the other addblocker I was trying out and installed this app Lite. I like the new look and it works just as well. as the old one.

by Maxvptrsn

I've been looking for a new ad blocker for a while now that I upgraded to Mojave and Apple had their new rules. The old, reliable ones I use to use just weren't working. I found a couple that I paid for that I "thought" worked but it turned out they had their other issues. Then I stubbled across this ad blocker and behold — IT WORKS and doesn't negatively impact my system. GREAT WORK !!!

by Marksanctuary

this app add blocker is the best replacement I could find for uBlock Origin so far. It has been a challenge to replace uBlock Origin, I have tried most of the options in the Mac App Store, such as AdBlock, Better, and more. Most had one issue or another. So far, this app Lite has most of the features that I need. The default filter options work good, and they have a custom filter option too. Their user interface is also easy to use and shows some basic stats for each site just as uBlock Origin. I think if the developer continues to maintain and develop this tool further I will be with this one for a long time. One recommendation is once you install both this app extensions restart Safari. I noticed it did not actually fully block until the Safari app was restarted.

by Wiricijebrjeb

I’ve used this browser extension since they made it before Apple allowed extensions for safari and always loved it! I waited patiently for the day Apple would allow extensions for Safari and now they’re here, and now this app has come too! this app was always one of the first extensions I installed on my web browsers for tracker blocking and it should be one of the first extensions you install into safari!