The most advanced ad blocking extension for Safari

Free and open source, highly customizable and lightning fast ad blocking extension.

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AdGuard for Safari

Ad blocking extensions for Safari are having hard time since Apple started to force everyone to use the new SDK. AdGuard extension is supposed to bring back the high quality ad blocking back to Safari.

Unlike other major ad blockers, AdGuard provides some extra features you are used to have with the traditional (now deprecated) extensions:

• Managing protection from Safari
• Choose among popular filter subscription
• Custom filters
• Creating your own filtering rules
• Manual blocking tool
• Allowlisting websites

AdGuard for Safari is based on the Safari native content blocking API, which makes it lightning fast, but somewhat limited in capabilities. For instance, Safari limits the number of rules a content blocker can have.

Better yet, there is a full-fledged AdGuard for Mac

With all above said, there is a solution that is even more effective than AG Safari extension. I mean, of course, AdGuard for Mac. It can:

• filter your traffic in all browsers and apps on your Mac
• have an unlimited number of filter rules
• provide a better filtering quality (due to the lack of browser API restrictions)

You can try it out for free.

How to build AdGuard for Safari

AdGuard for Safari consists of three parts:

• An Electron application.
• Safari Content Blocker extension
• Safari Toolbar icon extension

Prerequisites

• MacOS 13.1 or above
• Xcode 14.3 or above
• Xcode Command Line Tools
• Node.js v18.17.1 or higher
• Yarn
• JQ

Also, you need to install these packages globally:

• electron-packager
• node-gyp
• electron-osx-sign

yarn global add electron-packager
yarn global add node-gyp
yarn global add electron-osx-sign

How to build

To run application in development mode

cd ElectronMainApp

Install local dependencies by running:

yarn install

How to debug the app

Debug window

Launch the application via:

yarn start

Open menu View -> Toggle Developer Tools

Debug main process

Launch the application via

yarn inspect

Open URI chrome://inspect in Chromium

Then add a network target localhost:5858 via button "Configure" and select this target below.

Build and run in production mode

Replace the following line in file ./AdGuard/Config.xcconfig

AG_SIGN = <YOUR APPLE DEVELOPER COMMON NAME>

where <YOUR APPLE DEVELOPER COMMON NAME> is your codesign identity

Make sure your system Nodejs version higher v8.9.4.

Steps to check it: if you use nvm run

nvm use system
node -v

otherwise

node -v

Open AdGuard.xcworkspace in Xcode and run building project

How to run tests

cd ElectronMainApp
yarn test

Preparing and building Adguard.

Environment requirements

• MacOS 13.1+
• Xcode 14.3+
• Install Xcode command line tools

xcode-select --install

• Install the ruby module bundler if it is not in the system

sudo gem install bundler

• Fastlane manages development and distribution certificates according to the documentation described in fastlane match. The file ./fastlane/env.default contains variables (SENSITIVE_VARS_PATH, APP_STORE_CONNECT_API_KEY_PATH) that define the paths to files with private information necessary for fastlane match to work. Create these files in a hidden location with the appropriate contents and specify their paths in the these variables.
• You need to run the configure.sh dev script, which will install the necessary components and certificates locally.

cd <repository>
./configure.sh dev

Check certificates names in Scripts/ExportOptions.plist

Building

SafariConverterLib dependency

For converting rules to content-blocker format we use an external library as a binary built from https://github.com/AdguardTeam/SafariConverterLib/, that ConverterTool binary should be placed in ./libs/.

You use ./Scripts/download-lib.sh to download the latest release version of that binary from Github.

Common issues

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_your_app_before_distribution/resolving_common_notarization_issues

Use fixed electron-osx-sign

npm install -g electron-userland/electron-osx-sign#timestamp-server

How to release standalone builds

• update version package.json and AdGuard/standalone.xcconfig or AdGuard/standalone-beta.xcconfig
• build apps
• notarize builds
• publish release on Github
• refresh updates/updates.json and release.json in gh-pages branch

Build application

./build.sh <channel> [--notarize=0]

Arguments:

• <channel> -- updates channel:
  • mas -- Mac App Store
  • beta -- standalone beta
  • release -- standalone release
• [--notarize=0] -- optional parameter to skip notarization

Output directory build contains:

• Adguard for Safari.app -- signed and notarized app.
• Adguard for Safari.app.zip -- zip of signed and notarized app.
• Adguard for Safari.xcarchive -- app archive.
• Adguard for Safari.xcarchive.zip -- zip of app archive
• version.txt -- version info (CI requirement).
• updates.json -- json file with updates info.
• release.json -- json file with updates info.

Clean install

• Disable all AdGuard for Safari extensions in Safari browser settings and close browser
• Close AdGuard for Safari
• Delete the following directories:
  • ~/Library/Application Support/AdGuardSafariApp
  • ~/Library/Containers/ - all directories started with com.adguard.safari.AdGuard (if there’s any)
  • ~/Library/GroupContainers/TC3Q7MAJXF.com.adguard.safari.AdGuard
  • ~/Library/Preferences/com.adguard.safari.AdGuard.plist
• Quit all “AdGuard” and “cfprefsd” processes in Activity monitor
• Reinstall AdGuard for Safari