Safari gives ad blockers very little room. Each content blocker gets 150,000 rules and can't touch a page's JavaScript. wBlock ships five of them (750,000 rules) plus a scripts extension for everything a rule can't do. That covers scriptlets, cosmetic filters, userscripts and userstyles, an element zapper, and native video players for YouTube and most other sites.

It's free and collects nothing. If a list misbehaves, you can see what it compiled into, which lines Safari threw out, and what changed on the last update.

[!TIP] Deciding between wBlock, uBlock Origin Lite, Wipr, and AdGuard? I wrote a comparison.

What's in it

Blocking

• Filter lists in AdGuard syntax, compiled into Safari rules and spread across five blockers. Safari does the matching itself, and wBlock sits around 40 MB when idle.
• Good defaults, regional lists picked from your language, annoyance and cookie-banner lists, and anything you add by URL, paste, or file.
• Updates on a schedule you pick, hourly to weekly. Lists that publish diff patches only download what changed. On macOS a small launch agent keeps checking even when the app is closed.
• Tracking parameters like utm_* get stripped from links, and link shorteners get unwrapped. That's on by default.
• A capacity bar, and a rules viewer that tells you which lines were unsupported, duplicated, or handed to the scripts extension.

Userscripts and userstyles

• A Greasemonkey-compatible engine with both GM_* and GM.*. GM_xmlhttpRequest only reaches hosts a script lists in @connect.
• UserCSS themes (.user.css), including Less, Sass, and Stylus. More in docs/USERSTYLES.md.
• A built-in catalog with Tube Cleaner, Player Cleaner, DeArrow, Dark Reader, Return YouTube Dislike, Bypass Paywalls Clean, AdGuard Extra, AdGuard Popup Blocker, and TwitchAdSolutions. Everything in it ships off except tinyShield, an anti-adblock defuser.

Native video

Tube Cleaner and Player Cleaner hand a site's video back to Safari before the page paints. You get Picture-in-Picture, background audio, fullscreen, and Now Playing, same as a plain <video controls> tag.

Tube Cleaner is the YouTube one. It keeps YouTube's own stream, puts chapters and captions in Safari's native menus, and skips sponsors through SponsorBlock with per-category settings. If you also want better titles and thumbnails, DeArrow is a separate script. Player Cleaner does the same job on video.js, JW Player, Plyr, Flowplayer, MediaElement, Clappr, Media Chrome, and shadow-root players like Archive.org's, and it remembers speed, volume, captions, and where you left off on each site.

Both update from wBlock-userscripts on their own schedule, separate from the app. They don't block ads (the filter lists do that).

Per-site control

Click the toolbar button on any site and you get separate switches for filtering, userscripts, and autoplay, plus the element zapper. You can also limit a filter list or a userscript to certain sites, or keep it off them. Zapper rules stay editable in Settings.

Every device

It's one app on macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. iCloud syncs your lists, custom filters, userscripts, allowlist, and settings. If you'd rather keep things local, export a backup instead.

Screenshots

Userscripts on macOS
SponsorBlock in Tube Cleaner	The Safari popup on iPhone
Settings on macOS

Install

• App Store. It updates itself, and it's the one I'd use.
• Homebrew: brew tap 0xcub3/wblock && brew install --cask wblock
• DMG from the latest release.

All three are the same build. On first launch wBlock walks you through turning the extensions on in Safari.

TestFlight betas

TestFlight is Apple's optional beta distribution service. I use it to distribute signed beta builds and get feedback before a stable release. You don't need TestFlight or a paid Apple Developer membership to install the stable builds above.

Apple automatically collects beta crash logs and usage information and shares them with the developer. You cannot opt out of that collection while testing. Feedback and screenshots you submit are shared too and can contain private content. Read Apple's TestFlight privacy notice and the TestFlight section of wBlock's privacy policy before joining.

How it works