2022-04-25

Ad blocking in Firefox on iPhone iOS

uBlock Origin [0] is a plugin for the best ad blocking available, and it's available for Firefox on Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux.

However, Firefox on iPhone iOS (FF-iOS) does not have any plug-in support, so uBlock Origin is not available for it.

FF-iOS doesn't support plug-ins apparently because it's actually using Safari's rendering engine underneath (a choice forced by Apple, apparently).

What to do about ad blocking in FF-iOS then?

Turns out FF-iOS has ad blocking built-in! You just need to go into "Settings" > "Tracking Protection". Then enable "Enhanced Tracking Protection", and set "Protection Level" to "Strict".

This feature is frustratingly [1][2] not well publicized [3]!

Another very popular plug-in is "dark mode", and that too is built into FF-iOS! It's very prominently publicized in the app's "more" menu though.

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/jwi1r9/firefox_ios_should_integrate_with_ublock_to_make/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/n9jfui/firefox_ios_and_lack_of_content_blockers/
[3] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/5198#issuecomment-575617840