Mozilla Launches Focus By Firefox, a Content Blocker For iOS 9

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched an iOS content blocker called Focus by Firefox. It's a "content blocker" because although Focus is capable of blocking some ads, this latest project from the non-profit is aimed at stopping trackers. The free app is made possible thanks to iOS 9's content-blocking feature, which requires some setting up. Like with any content blocker, after you download Focus, you'll have to activate Focus' content-blocking features within your system-wide iOS settings (launching the app will provide a guide to finish configuration). It's worth noting that Focus only works with Safari. Mozilla says, "This was not our choice—Apple has chosen to make content blocking unavailable to third party browsers on iOS." Here is the Focus GitHub repo and its feedback tool.

Oh Apple, you so crazy

[Rob MacDonald]

And there's Apple creating that wonderful eco system again, by limiting useful features to their dying dinosaur of a browser, because that's the only reason safari even shows up in any browser lists, because apple forces you to use it. And I thought it was bad when they enabled "other browsers" that infact are merely a skin ontop of safari, this right here takes the cake. "We've listened to your concerns about privacy and tracking, and we care. But only enough to position our browser to be the only one o

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[malditaenvidia]

I don't think adding a "do not track" setting is going to do much of anything, anyway.

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[Anonymous Coward]

So do you just check off your Android fan-boy card yourself after a post like this or is there a more official mechanism?

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[BotanistPrime]

Yes, surely someone on earth actually likes a windows phone

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[KGIII]

*hangs head in shame and slowly raises his hand*

Err... Umm... I kinda do like my Windows phone. I plan on buying a better one shortly because it turns out that my carrier is allowing SIM card activations on non-branded phones. I didn't know that 'cause, err... Well. I didn't know that for REASONS...

I don't actually really pick out my phone or pay the bill. I have that taken care of on my behalf. I just said, "Get me a Windows phone please?" They ordered it and shipped it to my last stop. I guess I pay the b

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[allo]

Maybe some people hate all (mobile) OS? Why do you need to like one to dislike another?

Re: Oh Apple, you so crazy

[corychristison]

The thing about Safari that really irks me is they discontinued Safari for Windows a few years ago. Trying to debug a website in Safari is a nightmare if you don't own a Mac.

Yes, I am well aware of the W3C standards that all browsers follow (*rolls eyes*). Yes I am aware of Webkit and how it is open source... they dont seem to use Vanilla webkit in Safari.

Unfortunately Safari is much like IE in the sense that it only works on what Apple wants it to work on. That also means it is tied to specific hardware, t

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[Plumpaquatsch]

And there's Apple creating that wonderful eco system again, by limiting useful features to their dying dinosaur of a browser, because that's the only reason safari even shows up in any browser lists, because apple forces you to use it.

Let's ignore the "dying dinosaur" bit (because while it is utter bullshit, is also just off-topic fluff)

Yes, Apple created a new content block feature for iOS 9 that is so much faster than what the others are doing, people actually find it a useful feature. Yes, it is (currently) limited just to Safari, because Apple wants to iron out the majority of bugs without having the bugs of other programs influence how those bugs actually show up - just like they did with the vastly improved Nitro JavaScript Engin

Oh good I was starting to worry.

[thegarbz]

With the news over the past week I was beginning to worry that Mozilla was going to actually focus on making Firefox a nice browser. Good to see my faith was not misplaced.

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[lister king of smeg]

With the news over the past week I was beginning to worry that Mozilla was going to actually focus on making Firefox a nice browser. Good to see my faith was not misplaced.

Mozilla hasn't tried to add any real improvements for a while now just killing customizability (removing thaeming option removing add-on api's.) and adding bloat.

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[KGIII]

Two things, both a bit disparate...

Do you use Firefox? (This may lead to a follow-up question.)

Have you tried Opera? (Opera is based on Chromium and has the spyware stripped out and is actually a very nice browser with a great ecosystem.)

Also, if you want to help curate a browser then maybe Vivaldi is something for you? They're still reasonably new and one might have more ability to influence the direction with a new project than they will with an entrenched project.

For the past few weeks, I've been mulling

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[narcc]

That's why they just announced that they're dropping the FirefoxOS thing,

That's not happening:

We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform and will continue to experiment with the user experience across connected devices. We will build everything we do as a genuine open source project, focused on user experience first and build tools to enable the ecosystem to grow.

Development continues. All they've actually done is stop signing contracts with OEMs for smartphones. Imagine if Google stopped developing their own smartphones or stopped partnering with third-parties to develop smartphones but continued to develop Android. This is the same thing. They're in no way dropping the OS..

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled

[PineHall]

I wonder in regular firefox is the same Disconnect list used when you set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled? It is a nice feature that is unknown to most people. I like it because pages do load faster.

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[chefmonkey]

I wonder in regular firefox is the same Disconnect list used when you set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled?

It is.

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[antdude]

There are issues with it though. See my https://groups.google.com/foru... [google.com]|sort:date/mozilla.support.firefox/N3wPDW8YEJk/GcCVilBOBQAJ (or http://preview.tinyurl.com/4kc... [tinyurl.com] ) newsgroup thread that I recently discovered with http://ocregister.com/ [ocregister.com] and http://rottentomatoes.com/ [rottentomatoes.com] 's e-mail address login. :(

Not the right focus

[Kinwolf]

I've been asking them for years to get back their focus. Obviously they didn't understand my request.

Re: Restrictions

[cfalcon]

Content blockers are only supported on newer hardware. This is an Apple decision, ostensibly based on performance.

Not really useful, at least on my hardware

[movdqa]

I tried it on an iPhone 6 and the problem was that the ad-blocker slowed down Safari more than the ads do. So I disabled it and am back to using Reader Mode. I use AdBlock Plus on my Mac but it's a very fast system where the overhead from the AdBlock software isn't noticeable.

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[Plumpaquatsch]

https://brooksreview.net/2015/09/content-blocker-test/ [brooksreview.net]:

Which content blocker for iOS 9 is the best? I have no clue, but I did test a bunch to find out which one is the fastest. ... When I tried with all blockers on, I did not get the performance of the fastest blocker, and instead got performance on the slower side of the blockers tested. It is my recommendation that you only use one blocker at a time.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[KGIII]

With a little work, you can be tracked if you use Tor to browse "clearnet." So long as you remain on domains that end in .onion it's still assumed that you're safe - provided you have things like scripting enabled and no extensions loaded.

Oddly, the sites on the Tor network remind me of the internet in the mid-1990s. I wonder if they're follow a similar path.