Adblock Plus appeared yesterday on Google Play. It’s a great news as it means better browsing experience. Application acts as transparent proxy so you can use Google Chrome without any ads.
Adblock Plus pros and cons
pros
- it works transparently
- it will block ads over Wi-Fi/3G on rooted device
- it will block mobile ads, banners, HTML5/display/video advertising and much more
- you can choose filter list and synchronize it automatically so it is always up to date
- you can edit filter list by hand (but this is not stated in application description)
cons
- it will block ads only over Wi-Fi if device is not rooted
- high memory usage
- it can crash occasionally (although process restarts automatically)
Small comparison
CNN.com International with ads:
CNN.com International without ads:
Rotten Tomatoes with ads:
Rotten Tomatoes without ads:
How to turn off notification icon
Go to Settings -> Apps -> Adblock Plus and make sure that Show notifications check box is not checked.
How to customize filter list
On rooted Nexus 7 device go to /data/user/0/org.adblockplus/android/files/ directory. This path can differ but it will be similar. Edit patterns.ini file but beware it is huge so preferably do it using notebook.
Then force stop Adblock Plus and restart it. Do not forget to set subscription refresh mode to manual.
Alternative solution
There is an alternative solution AdAway. It is using the hosts file so it is resource friendly, although it does require root permissions. I am using it right now and it rocks. I will reevaluate Adblock Plus later and maybe use both but for now I will just wait and see.
