Adguard for Windows, Android, iOS

[harlan4096]

AdGuard VPN For Windows 1.2.2 released

This patch has many important bug fixes, one update, and a quote from Bill Gates. We noticed that there was an error when connecting to a VPN for a long time, and some users were periodically losing the connection for a few moments. Fixed it. As Bill Gates said, “It's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” And lastly, we updated the VPN client.

[harlan4096]

AdGuard v1.11 for Safari: Fight for filtering rule limits

Being able to block ads and protect against trackers well sometimes takes a lot of work: this time we argued with Apple about the filtering rule limit — and succeeded! Now let us tell you how it was.

Why 50,000 is not enough

We once wrote that Apple had banned content blockers from using more than 50,000 filtering rules at a time. This was causing an obvious inconvenience. First of all, 50,000 is really not enough: our Base Filter now has about 30,000 rules. If you wanted to turn on another filter, the limit was exceeded. But this restriction can actually be circumvented: an application can use more than one content blocker. We took advantage of it by grouping the filters into 6 content blockers: General, Privacy, Social, Security, Other, and Custom. There are 50,000 rules in each of them — together it makes 300,000.

But even this division couldn't solve all the problems: users were getting notifications that the rules limit had been exceeded. During that, some rules from the filter didn't work and the filtering process failed.

Besides, some filters contain directives to transfer rules to another content blocker. If you had enabled multiple filters at once, some content blockers would get overrun too.

A small but important achievement

But we did actually succeed. We had written repeatedly to Apple on increasing the limit — and they kept saying no, arguing that the performance would degrade. But it seems that we’ve changed their minds: their tests were successful and the rule limit for each content blocker was increased to 150,000 — for our six content blockers, that’s 900,000 in total. This is three times more than before — which means that we’ll be able to apply the rules more flexibly, the filtering will become better, and users will have fewer chances to get into a situation where nothing works because the limit is exceeded.

What else we’ve changed

You might have noticed that our icon has been changed. Apple asked us to remove the Safari icon from our logo — and we appreciate that. But you definitely won’t get confused by our new one: it’s actually not that new.

Besides, we’ve updated the rules converter, scriptlets, and the Browser Assistant, and fixed some minor bugs. If you want to know more, there's always a full list of changes in our GitHub repository.
 

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We hope you'll enjoy the new version of AdGuard for Safari. We're always happy to hear what you think of us — share your feedback in the blog comments, on social media, and on GitHub.

[harlan4096]

AdGuard Browser extension version 4.0.161 from April 5, 2022 "

In this version we fixed a truckload of bugs, elaborated the scrollbar design, and updated translations. This update is small but efficient.

Changelog:

[Added] color-scheme: dark; for post installation pages and scrolls #1408
[Enhancement] Scrollbar style #2010
[Fixed] CPU load increases on browser restart with open tabs
[Fixed] The text doesn’t fit in the button #2024
[Fixed] Filter description is too close to its title and info #2022
[Fixed] Sometimes $replace rules do not work and are not displayed in the filtering log #2018
[Fixed] Circle around the protection switch blinks when hovering the cursor over it #2015
[Fixed] Firefox Nightly error #2011
[Fixed] Phishing pop up is displayed on all websites #2009
[Fixed] Edge offers to translate the settings page into Russian although it's already in Russian #2005
[Updated] Chinese translation #2029

[harlan4096]

AdGuard Browser extension version 4.0.163 from April 12, 2022

This is a minor update following the major v4.0.161 one. You probably won't know the difference but that's okay — some updates go unnoticed.

[harlan4096]

AdGuard for Mac v2.8: Export/import your settings, Anti DPI feature and a certificate explained

The previous release version of AdGuard for Mac came out right before Christmas, while this one comes out in time for Easter. Not that we see a trend here, just mentioning a fun fact that caught our attention. Back to business: our AdGuard for Mac 2.8 release version boasts two features and an important addition that we would like to put forward.

Settings export/import feature

We should start by mentioning the long-coveted settings export/import feature, that’s already been implemented in every AdGuard product but the MacOS version. This release rectifies such an unfortunate state of things. Yes indeed, now macOS users too can finally export and import their settings in bulk, we can hardly believe it ourselves!

Anti-DPI feature

Next, we have added an option that will hopefully improve your privacy — anti-DPI. Partially, it will prevent the Deep Packet Inspection systems of your ISP from detecting the websites you visit. While we understand that the DPI mechanism has been used for a long time for mostly advanced network management purposes, we still feel unease in regards to it being able to do such unpleasant things as data mining, internet censorship or plain and simple eavesdropping on users. So this anti-DPI function is our input in net neutrality, if you will.

HTTPS filtering Certificate and why you need it

You will henceforth be seeing more dialog screens while installing AdGuard. We can foresee a “why?” at this point, so here goes: AdGuard asks for a lot of permissions upon installation, it is true. And it does make a lot of changes to your system configuration, more importantly, it generates and installs a certificate to perform HTTPS filtering. Previously it was done without alerting the user. That knowledge might be enough to cause some jitters, we get that. And so it is very important for us to explain to our users that those permissions AdGuard asks for are crucial for quality filtering. After all, quality ad filtering is the reason behind installing AdGuard in the first place, right? So in a new dialog screen about this certificate, we firmly state our policy again: despite the permissions asked, we do not use the power gained over your system for any purpose whatsoever except filtering ads. Ever.

To top it all off, we have resolved the odd issue of the Browser Assistant icon going randomly gray while the application itself was running. As per usual, aside from the big stuff, we did some minor bug-fixing and updated CoreLibs and DNSLibs for a better user experience. Hope you appreciate!
 

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As always, the complete list of changes can be seen on GitHub.

Your feedback is very welcome so please don't hesitate to share your thoughts and impressions with us here or on social networks. This will help us improve!

[harlan4096]

AdGuard for Android 3.6.8

Changelog

• [Fixed] AdGuard not turning on inside Samsung secure folder, Android 12 #4073
  
• [Fixed] Replace the "Move certificate" with "AdGuard certificate" as a recommended Magisk module #4126
  
• [Fixed] Check "pref.dns.blocking.type" translations, they seem to be outdated #4133
  
• [Fixed] The URL in about wrongly includes the front words (zh-TW) #3654
  
• [Fixed] Make sure that we open proper settings section when installing a certificate on Samsung devices #4115
  
• [Fixed] Add an DPI-bypass option to AdGuard Stealth Mode #4131
  
• [Other] Update CoreLibs and DnsLibs to their latest versions
  

[harlan4096]

AdGuard v4.4.0 for iOS released

Meet AdGuard v4.4.0 for iOS! In this release we have fixed only one, but incredibly annoying issue with AdGuard DNS filtering module handling network changes. Now everything works without glitches and we can finally relax (for a while). Hope you will enjoy the new version.

Changelog

• [Enhancement] Updated DnsLibs to v1.7.28 #1982
  
• [Fixed] VPN tunnel does not restart on a network change #1892
  

[harlan4096]

AdGuard Blog: Hey Google, we've fixed it for you: AdGuard will block Topics to make Google Privacy Sandbox truly private

The new Google privacy initiative — the Privacy Sandbox — will fail to fulfill its declared goal, that is to offer more privacy to users while benefiting advertisers.

The Topics API, set to replace cookies, is to blame. Read to learn why we will be blocking it.

• Privacy Sandbox is an assortment of technologies proposed by Google to make advertising more privacy-conscious
  
• Privacy Sandbox promises privacy protection, but the concept fails through due to one faulty element — Google Topics
  
• Topics won’t stop tech giants from collecting vast amounts of user data
  
• Topics may make it harder for a single website in a vacuum to identify an individual user, but not for Big Tech
  
• Topics will cement Google’s ad monopoly
  
• Topics is one bad apple that spoils the whole barrel, therefore AdGuard is blocking it
  

[harlan4096]

AdGuard Browser extension 4.0.171 ​

Release date: May 25, 2022

Review status​

• Chrome: In review
  
• AMO: In review
  
• Opera: Published
  
• Edge: Published
  

As you can see from the changelog, this release cannot boast any epic changes: we have just fixed a few UI and UX related bugs. Nevertheless, every improvement is valuable because it brings AdGuard Browser extension closer to the ideal!

Changelog​

• [Enhancement] The filter log window opens with the same size, position, and state (full-screen/not full-screen) as it was when it was previously closed #1125
  
• [Fixed] The filter name and its description are too close to each other #2022
  
• [Fixed] The 'Preserve Log' icon becomes inactive only after double-clicking #2052
  

[harlan4096]

AdGuard Browser extension 4.0.181

​Release date: June 3, 2022

Review status:​

• Chrome: In review
  
• AMO: Published
  
• Opera: In review
  
• Edge: Published
  

This version contains only minor fixes. But each of them has made the extension better!

Changelog​

• [Enhancement] Updated Tsurlfilter
  
• [Fixed] AdGuard favicon is not displayed in the browser tab of the Firefox browser #2062
  
• [Fixed] Syntax highlighter misses some modifiers #2075