I wanted to ask the community what their view on the ad-blocking app Wipr. This is what I currently use on both my iPhone and MacBook Air.
I’ve tried AdGuard, but I do like the simplicity of Wipr and I wouldn’t use AdGuard’s premium features since I already use a private DNS (Quad9, which blocks malicious domains for free unlike AdGuard). I also like that Wipr is a one-time purchase rather than AdGuard’s subscription. And I’d be supporting a smaller app creator.
The only downside I can see would be that it isn’t open source.
Wipr 2 is currently in beta, but is supposed to be better than Wipr in a few ways. I’d probably use that when it’s released if all is well.
I was inspired to ask this after another user asked about 1Blocker, which I had used years ago on an old Apple account. I don’t see much discussion on ad-blockers other than AdGuard and uBO.
AdGuard for Safari is completely free on macOS from what I can tell, and the limited (honestly very usable) version is free on iOS as well. AdGuard Pro also has a lifetime option on iOS, last I checked it was only available if you bought the separate AdGuard Pro app though, which is why you may be confused about it being a subscription.
AdGuard does have a “lifetime” subscription which is effectively a one-time purchase equivalent. Wipr was good back when I tried it (last time was probably 2yrs ago). Good to know the dev is still active and working on a sequel.
If you already rely on DNS filtering, you could just use dedicated element or inline script blocking extensions to handle those bits that get through. This is what I currently use on my iPad (no experience with Mac, sorry), in case you’re curios;
@BionicBison I did miss that there was a one-time purchase version of the app on the iOS App Store, so thank you for telling me that. I just checked and Adguard for Safari on macOS does indeed seem to be completely free.
@gapless I did notice after reinstalling Adguard on iOS, that it does also offer a lifetime purchase in the app too. Yeah, I use Quad9 through the iVerify app as it means I don’t need to use a configuration profile. And I wouldn’t delete iVerify since it also has other good functions like iOS update notifications and forcing HTTPS connections while blocking non-HTTPS connections in Safari.
After trying Adguard again on Safari on iOS, I did notice that it removes the whitespace left over from where an ad is supposed to be, that is something Wipr doesn’t do. I’ll give Adguard a go for a while and see what I think.