µBlock - Lightweight AdBlocker

[Petrovic]

Yet another blocker for those who can't stand micromanaging rules etc., but are yearning for something that doesn't eat away at their computer resources, it's easy on CPU and memory footprints. As you may have guessed, pretty much a lot of it was taken from HTTP Switchboard and then reduced to a simple blocker like so many out there. Only one big button in the popup to turn it off or on for specific sites.

See Change log for latest changes.

An efficient blocker for Chromium-based browsers. Fast and lean.



The above screenshot was taken after running my reference benchmark plus a bit of random browsing. All blockers were active at the same time, thus they had to deal with exactly the same workload. Before the screenshot was taken, I left the browser idle for many minutes so as to let the browser's garbage collector kicks in.

Regarding reviews in various web store:

• My answer to Chrome store reviews where appropriate

Some articles about the origin of the source code behind µBlock:

• Net request filtering efficiency: HTTP Switchboard vs. Adblock Plus
• Adblock Plus memory consumption

Forums:

• On Reddit
• On Hacker News

Installation
From the Chrome store, or manually.

To benefit from the higher efficiency, it is of course not advised to use an inefficient blocker at the same time. µBlock will do as well or better than the popular blockers out there.

Documentation
I think it is pretty obvious, except for this I suppose:



The big fat power button is to disable/enable µBlock for the specific hostname which can be extracted from the URL address of the current page. (It applies to the current web site only, it is not a global power button.) The state of the power switch for a specific site will be remembered.

Project home page: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Chrome store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/µblock/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm

 

[Oxygen]

Did uTorrent make this?

 

[Kent]

Yet another blocker for those who can't stand micromanaging rules etc., but are yearning for something that doesn't eat away at their computer resources, it's easy on CPU and memory footprints. As you may have guessed, pretty much a lot of it was taken from HTTP Switchboard and then reduced to a simple blocker like so many out there. Only one big button in the popup to turn it off or on for specific sites.

See Change log for latest changes.

An efficient blocker for Chromium-based browsers. Fast and lean.



The above screenshot was taken after running my reference benchmark plus a bit of random browsing. All blockers were active at the same time, thus they had to deal with exactly the same workload. Before the screenshot was taken, I left the browser idle for many minutes so as to let the browser's garbage collector kicks in.

Regarding reviews in various web store:

• My answer to Chrome store reviews where appropriate

Some articles about the origin of the source code behind µBlock:

• Net request filtering efficiency: HTTP Switchboard vs. Adblock Plus
• Adblock Plus memory consumption

Forums:

• On Reddit
• On Hacker News

Installation
From the Chrome store, or manually.

To benefit from the higher efficiency, it is of course not advised to use an inefficient blocker at the same time. µBlock will do as well or better than the popular blockers out there.

Documentation
I think it is pretty obvious, except for this I suppose:



The big fat power button is to disable/enable µBlock for the specific hostname which can be extracted from the URL address of the current page. (It applies to the current web site only, it is not a global power button.) The state of the power switch for a specific site will be remembered.

Project home page: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Chrome store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/µblock/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm

Using it;low resource usage....great!!!

 

[Koroke San]

Do i need it if i'm using adguard ( installer ) ? i'm using malware domain & MVP host file filters.

 

[Kent]

Do i need it if i'm using adguard ( installer ) ? i'm using malware domain & MVP host file filters.

You will still need adguard ( installer ) as µBlock does not have a element hiding blocker like adguard.Some advert.get through µBlock on FB,and few other sites..............

 

[Koroke San]

I'm using both now except i'm not using and adblock filters in ublock. I tested a comparison of ublock in 2 browser & it works fine. if u click on disable/enable then everytime u need to reload page to work properly.

 

[PlayerFromTheITtic]

Hello everyone!

Nice play, gorhill, your HTTP Switchboard was already awesome, but uBlock will be ultra convenient for novice users! :3

 

[tucfawa]

µBlock does not have a element hiding blocker like adguard

It does: see 3rd-party filters, at the bottom: "Parse and enforce Adblock+ element hiding filters".

 

[Terry Ganzi]

Adblockers have become essential tools for many users on the Internet. As a user, I can understand the necessity of blocking distracting or heavy advertisement on the Internet as it can be really annoying.




As a webmaster who earns his living from ads, I trust the readers of this site to make the right decision and whitelist it so that its few ads are displayed and I can continue to run this site.

Adblockers come in all sizes and shapes, and like other add-ons, differ significantly when it comes to resource usage, performance, features and what is being blocked and what not.

Adblock Plus, probably the most popular blocker extension of them all, came under fire recently when it was revealed that it could drive up memory usage in Firefox by a lot under certain circumstances.

The author of HTTP Switchboard, an advanced blocker extension for Google Chrome that is probably the best right now when it comes to that, has released uBlock yesterday for the browser.

UBlock offers much what HTTP Switchboard offers, but in a straightforward manner without all the nice to have features of its bigger sibling.



The first thing you will notice is that it uses less memory than HTTP Switchboard and a lot less than Adblock Plus. Keep in mind that this is in idle state of the browser. With pages loaded, consumption goes up but it stays below that of the other two extensions.

What you will notice right away after installation that the interface is rather minimalistic. While it displays the number of blocked elements in its icon, and some stats about what it blocked on the page and overall, it does not display the domain listing that HTTP Switchboard uses.

While that may be a turn off for some users, others may appreciate it as they don't have to deal with these information.


The on this page feature seems broken right now

As far as options are concerned: you can load filters from various lists, EasyList is for instance supported as are more than two dozen other lists, add your own filters to the list which are enabled then by default as well, and even host names that you can load using the third-party filter listing or by adding them to your own custom filter listing.

Filters can be imported if they are in the right format or edited right away if you open the your filters page of the options.

The extension's main appeal is its ease of use and its low resource usage. If you run Chrome on a low to mid-end device and notice slow downs while running Adblock Plus or another adblocker of choice, you may want to give this a try to see if it improves the situation for you.

 

[thepierrezou]

RAM used on my pc is more low than your screenshot and ublock use less than HTTP switchboard

 

[Striker]

Thx working fine on Chrome Canary 64Bit browser. removed adblock plus.

 

[yigido]

Updated to 5.0.1 version into my Opera

 

[cookie1]

Brilliant extension. Thank you!

 

[yigido]

Hey guys who uses uBlock. Please help the uBlock development with your and your friends translations on Crowdin.
Please create a Crowdin account and start the translate.
here : https://crowdin.com/project/ublock
It will be helpfull for your localization for near future. It is developing fast and I want to help gorhill about it. You can also help.
Thanks

 

[starchild76]

I like adblock better , the reason why is that ublock slows my chrome startup and browsing speed. I also noticed that the program let some ads slip through that adblock plus does catch. ( and yes I did tweak ublock )

 

[yigido]

I like adblock better , the reason why is that ublock slows my chrome startup and browsing speed. I also noticed that the program let some ads slip through that adblock plus does catch. ( and yes I did tweak ublock )

Is it a bug? or you think uBlock does this knowingly!

 

[starchild76]

I do not know used it with the same settings as I do with abp ( fanboys ultimate all options )

 

[yigido]

I do not know used it with the same settings as I do with abp ( fanboys ultimate all options )

Ok. I hope it is a bug.

 

[gorhill]

Ok. I hope it is a bug.

There is no bug. There is no performance issues. It's actually completely nonsensical to claim so in comparison of AdBlock or Adblock Plus. All the benchmarks I ran confirm the opposite, by a large margin. People who use
µBlock on low performance devices confirm this.

I run benchmarks all the time to drive development. Whoever says there are performance issues will have to come up with as thorough benchmarks as I do to support claims of bad performance (thorough as in detailed methodology in order for other to reproduce). I already posted plenty of benchmark results, and never was performance a problem for uBlock, since it was written from scratch with efficiency in mind, not as an after-though.

For example, as part of a bug fix today, I typically did a code review to see what could be improved performance-wise while at it, and posted the benchmark result of the changes (compare this to an older benchmark). This is typical, I always look for opportunity to improve performance.

 

[hopefully_secure]

There is no bug. There is no performance issues. It's actually completely nonsensical to claim so in comparison of AdBlock or Adblock Plus. All the benchmarks I ran confirm the opposite, by a large margin. People who use
µBlock on low performance devices confirm this.

I run benchmarks all the time to drive development. Whoever says there are performance issues will have to come up with as thorough benchmarks as I do to support claims of bad performance (thorough as in detailed methodology in order for other to reproduce). I already posted plenty of benchmark results, and never was performance a problem for uBlock, since it was written from scratch with efficiency in mind, not as an after-though.

For example, as part of a bug fix today, I typically did a code review to see what could be improved performance-wise while at it, and posted the benchmark result of the changes (compare this to an older benchmark). This is typical, I always look for opportunity to improve performance.

I have seen the possible "bug" he is referring to, I can't reproduce it on demand though. Sometimes a pop-up window will get through and open up in a background tab. It is very rare though.