AdBlock Reviews

I usually don’t write reviews for apps because I’m generally not too impressed by most of them. In this case, however, I had to write a review.

I started using AdBlock almost a year ago and was very happy with it as it worked to block ads 95% of the time in my games, apps, sites, etc. Recently, Apple decided for some stupid reason that this app wasn’t allowed to block ads in the way they had been doing after it had been on the store for probably a year or more. Why Apple did that is just plain idiotic after so many people paid for AdBlock and the developer depends upon Apple not destroying their app.

I figured this meant this app would cease to function at all and I’d be back to ad-Armageddon on my phone. I’m glad I was wrong! This new DNS based ad blocking is phenomenal and in my experience it is now blocking all ads in every app I’ve tried so far, I don’t believe I’ve seen a single ad yet. The user interface is extremely well polished and the options are very flexible. The built in DNS logging inside this app also allows you to manually block an ad if it’s not caught by the preset filters.

All of this is to say, buy AdBlock. I no longer have to sit through ridiculous 30 second long video ads in apps or have fraudulent pop ups show up saying my iPhone has a virus. The state of ads on iOS is atrocious and they seriously degrade the user experience. Thank you this app for solving this!

Ok so, I downloaded AdBlock thinking it would stop the random videos popping up throughout the games I am playing. My friend recommended me AdBlock . I paid for it with a gift card I had acquired, and I’m 75% sure that it charged me twice.

My friend stated that AdBlock removed many different videos in games she also plays. I downloaded AdBlock , and I find that there is no difference. I would appreciate it if the developers gave me my money back, and I remove AdBlock . Throughout the reviews they seem pretty well, but I saw one that says Apple stopped them from blocking the ads. Which is dumb? I’m paying money to block the ads, then the developers of the games I play make more money off of me? I feel cheated, but I can deal.

I gave it a three star review, 1) because I think I was charged twice, and 2) because I don’t believe that AdBlock quenched my needs. People seem to be blaming Apple for that, so I guess I will as well. Also this is the first review I’ve ever written, so I apologize if its a mess. Grammar is difficult.

It It actually works. To be honest I really didn’t think it would. I don’t need another ad blocker app that advertised that it would block ads on safari and in apps, but after I spent 2.99 on it, I found out that it didn’t. This one on the other hand works perfectly. Simply search the Internet for “dns list future minds ad blocker”. You’re find a Reddit Page that links to list on github. (There are several so any that seem to be updated somewhat regularly will do.) Import that list and start the ad blocker. If the ads on the website or app you want aren’t blocked, simply enable dns logging on the ad blocker app, then open the dns log right after the ad pops up and block the links on the top of the list. Boom. It took me about 5 mins to block the stubborn ones. Most of them were gone as soon as I imported the list from github.

V4 does some sort of iCloud sync, which I don’t understand because I don’t need anything synced with iCloud. The sync takes too long and the interface to turn off this app won’t let you do anything until that sync is complete. Instead of waiting, and messing with a swipe interface, just give us a button to turn it on and off, do the housekeeping in the background.

Why do I need to turn it off? Because when it’s on, there are several sites - major sites - that don’t work. For example in order to complete this review, this app had to come down. I realize there are all sorts of things I could do to fine tune this behavior, but I don’t have time to mess with DNS lists, I just want it to block ads and get out of the way quickly when it needs to shut down.

When it works it works well. Please tell users what the heck is being synced and if possible do this in the background!

People giving this one star are expecting an app where—once you launch it—spend five seconds to set it up. AdBlock requires much, much more work than that. Each time you get an ad you must go into the DNS log manually to save that particular rogue URL to your personal block list. Eventually you’ll add over 1,000 entries to your block list and then all your ads will be blocked. I use this with Words With Friends and haven’t gotten an ad pop up in a month. Just know you have to spend hours configuring AdBlock for it to work the way you want. I didn’t know this previously and therefore gave AdBlock one star. I’ve now revised my review to five stars.

AdBlock has horrible issues. First of all, it’s incredibly slow importing DNS lists. It’s a host file, it’s almost unfathomable that it takes as long as it does to import a list of hosts into a text file. There should be a built in dns blocking list anyways. Second, and more importantly, the vpn does not stay connected and you need to constantly go back and manually reactivate it, so essentially AdBlock doesn’t even work as described. App shouldn’t cost money for such an amateur experience.

Edit: it seems like some of the issues are resolved so I am updating to 3 stars. The VPN stays connected but there are still no built in DNS lists with common block lists like on some competitors in the space offer. I have not tried importing a new DNS list so I can’t comment on whether the developers have fixed their file parser to operate at a reasonably ... expected speed

AdBlock itself does exactly what it’s meant to, and I have no issues when it comes to ad blocking itself. My issue, and to me it’s a huge one, is the fact that AdBlock always turns itself off. It is so annoying that I turn on the VPN, then it randomly turns itself off. It could be on for as little as five minutes or a couple of hours, but it ALWAYS turns itself off. I would be less upset had this application been free, but the fact that I paid for this thing to block ads and it does always turns itself off and ends up NOT blocking them is really infuriating. What is most upsetting is that when it is on, it works so well, and I want to give AdBlock a good review and recommend it to everyone, but the fact that it always turns off makes it very unreliable. Because of this, I cannot recommend you or anyone else I know purchase AdBlock.

AdBlock comes by default with a browser widget that blocks ads. Works great with the preset block lists. It also comes with a VPN that blocks ads—but no presets for that. If you want to use the VPN, you need to find a “.this app” list file (or multiple) on the internet and use the import system. After doing so, ads are blocked EVERYWHERE! My phone has a longer battery life because of AdBlock. I’m happy, but some people may not be. If you are a “newbie” and blocking ads in Safari is all you want, no worries. If you want the VPN to work, you need some understanding of how to find, download, and import files on iOS. I hope this review was helpful.

AdBlock was great prior to the IOS 14 update, did what it was supposed to and was worth it for the price. As of recent however it can’t properly function alongside the newest IPhone update and will slow your WiFi connection tremendously across all apps that seem to have ads. This is easily proven since once I had disabled AdBlock my wifi was as fast and strong as it was prior to the update. The only way to have it function currently it to leave your phone in airplane mode which I simply can’t do.

This application works amazingly well when browsing on applications such as Safari or Google Chrome. What most people forget to do is import DNS rules and set it to their IP address; if not, it won’t block much of the ads. The application used to block ads that were on other applications (I.e. mobile games and streaming sites), but that feature disappeared. Hopefully they can bring it back and block the constant ads on other apps.

One major critique is that this application has trouble blocking pop-up advertisements that redirect you to a different site, which breaks the original link that the user wanted to browse. Hope that they can add an option to blacklist or block certain ad-links that break the site.

Update: July 14, 2021

It is completely unusable now. Multiple updates and refreshes and install and uninstalls later, I find myself not being able to block any ads. It’s frustrating and honestly I’m tired of it. At the time I got AdBlock there were not a lot of ad-blockers available. And in that time, AdBlock shined like a star. But idk what happened, it’s become completely useless. Will constantly switch from wi-to to LTE and refuses to stay consistently on.
It’s a real shame because I wanted to give AdBlock one last go. But sadly, I must move on.
My suggestion, use a different ad-blocker.
I’m sure the people are not to blame here and are good people trying their best to fix it. But at this moment it’s not worth the trouble.

Used to work really well. Then I disabled it for something on chrome and then when I went to go turn it back on, ads were still popping up again. It automatically turns it off after a while so you have to go and open AdBlock again to allow it to continue blocking. It's good and works well, but fix the bug where I have to manually go and turn it on every 20-30 minutes when it should always be on until I want it off.

Was trying this one out but this one is just complicated go to import a host file & it doesn’t do it all auto there’s more to it like some group thing I don’t know I wasn’t fighting with this complicated mess, in 1 min I downloaded dnscloak opened went into setting enabled blacklist, open the same host file into it, went back to the start enabled Ad block server & tested with the site the sims resource ad happy site, that app works gets what I needed done a lot faster no fuss, this one used to be good but too many extra steps just makes it frustrating.

Old review:
be prepared to have to down grade AdBlock ! If your updated to the junk 4 version AdBlock isn’t worth buying!
AdBlock does not block ads in other apps as of V4
I’m rating it based off the V3 vpn version DO NOT BUY AdBlock now it doesn’t do anything any other free app can do !
Also again do not update!!
(Downgrade is possible now long as u don’t update iTunes ...)

AdBlock still works fine on the older update you do not have to update when there is updates! Turn off auto updates.

Before they changed the way AdBlock worked (I think they had to do so because of an iOS update), this was hands down a 5-star app that I absolutely loved, I had forgotten the existence of advertisements. Now I forget that I had this app because of the constant issues, I need to reset my connection, disable and reenable this app and restart AdBlock I want to block the ads of in between each one of those steps to have it work, until I have suboptimal internet connection for a split second, because then it’s all over again. AdBlock made me in love with itself when I first got it, and now makes me reboot my days away. This is such a great app that has turned very inefficient, I hope it redeems its qualities.

Loved AdBlock in the beginning. Snagged some proxy rules off GitHub and it worked flawlessly for a few days. I swear my phone was even faster on all fronts! Then after a few weeks of use I noticed it isn’t able to stay on... which imo defeats its purpose. It seems whenever the phone idles for a while or changes WiFi spots, AdBlock turns itself off. Nowadays I find myself turning it back on every other day. VERY annoying. I even have AdBlock enabled for background refresh. No help. So in conclusion, wish it worked better- but perhaps this has to do with how apple is cracking down on ad blockers cause they want you to have all the ad tracking.

4.5 is still not stable. When this app is on (you see the VPN icon), I’ll use an app (Apple news, for example), the page will start loading, then the phone disconnect from WiFi and cell service, then after a few seconds just be connected to cell service (after it drops WiFi) and then cycles back to WiFi after 10 or 15 seconds, when the this app will no longer be active. These behaviors don’t happen when this app is off.
this app used to be stable and amazing. It’s not anymore. It’s actually LESS frustrating to see ads everywhere than deal with the delays and instability when this app is on. I hate ads, so that’s saying a lot.

Most of the time, the ad domains are already blocked, but a few apps have domains that aren’t blocked and ads can slip through. I had to manually find the ad domains and separate them from regular domains. Some domains let AdBlock run, so if I block that, I screw up AdBlock . I manage to find all the ad domains and separate from regular domains. If it wasn’t for the new domain detector, I wouldn’t be able to find all the ad domains, because those ad domains didn’t came up on the last version but did now. AdBlock needs to be kept up to date for the domains so I wouldn’t have to look them up manually.

I had hopes this would be the final stop in the war against increasingly overbearing mobile ads. Unfortunately, most of the good reviews seem to be from previous versions of AdBlock .

As far as my mobile ad experience, I don’t even notice a difference when it’s on/off. I still get the same ads at the same frequency. Same annoying redirects, same pop-ups, same video ads. In fact, the only way I can tell it’s even enabled is because it prevents certain pages from loading altogether. Then I’m left with no ads...but also a blank page :^)

The proxy is meh. It’s nice in theory but it noticeably slows things down and it can be murder on battery life. If you’re looking for a seamless ad-free mobile experience, unfortunately this is not it.

I love AdBlock for it's functionality and features. However it drains the battery on my phone. It's a major major problem I habe with AdBlock. I watched my battery run down from fully charged to 50% or less withing a couple hours and I'm by no means a heavy user. When I check the battery stats it showed as the #1 for battery consumption with more than 50% of overall battery usage. This happened on countless occasions. I would delete AdBlock and then the battery usage goes back to normal. Also my phone was always hot when I had AdBlock installed. All of this happened after a recent update. I love AdBlock and want too use it but I cant, because it is devastating to my battery.

Note to prospective buyers: you get what you pay for. At under $2, don’t expect a miracle or even decent support. I installed AdBlock and configured my device per the instructions, but nothing was blocked in Safari. I cleared the Safari cache and restarted my device. Still no luck. I tried emailing their support team, and they gave me a form letter repeating the installation instructions, which I confirmed I had done, and asked for next steps. They did not reply. I then read the reviews and saw that other users had some luck by deleting AdBlock , restarting their devices, and reinstalling. I tried this and it worked.

Long story short: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

I don’t use AdBlock a whole lot, but I think it works well. With the older versions, I had to refresh AdBlock every day, and the results were always mixed. With the newest update, it seems to work much better. I got the update, opened this app and forgot about it, then after several days I noticed I wasn’t being interrupted with ads in other apps like I was before. As a test, I turned off this app, and the ads were back. Obviously, I’ll keep this app running from now on! Thanks!!!