Adblock Support

[ghost]

I know the extension support is not easy to implement but the lack of ad blocking on android browsers is not acceptable in the community and is one of the few reasons I still use Brave instead of Thorium.
I ask for a built in ad blocking engine similar to Brave and vivaldi and option to modify custom filter lists.
You can also use Brave Shield code base since it's open source.
Samsung browser has the ability to support AdGaurd android app for ad blocking and DNS routing, if built in ad blocker is not possible then supporting AdGaurd or AdAway apps will be appreciated.

[psynyde]

cromite can be a good alternative if you're looking a chrome with adblock support. I don't know the speed comparison between thorium & cromite but to be a usable browser nowadays thorium should support ad block by default on android.

also there's also the kiwi project which enables full chrome webstore support for Android. Although this is not needed fully but can be a great addition.

[ghost]

cromite can be a good alternative if you're looking a chrome with adblock support. I don't know the speed comparison between thorium & cromite but to be a usable browser nowadays thorium should support ad block by default on android.

also there's also the kiwi project which enables full chrome webstore support for Android. Although this is not needed fully but can be a great addition.

Cross device sync is important for me and unfortunately those suggestions you gave are only available for android and have no desktop clients. I'm currently using Brave browser but Thorium is way faster than brave especially in android client. I will keep an eye on this issue for if it gets attention and adblocker becomes a feature for Thorium android some day.

Thank for your suggestions tho.

[foxjaw]

Cross device support = Either use a public server or host your own with Nextcloud like integrations.
Public servers are never recommended for Privacy reasons. Self hosting is expensive but a better option.

I have a bad taste with Brave. Their claims on their website are very shady, & crypto integration. They also claim to sync the device through Sync Chain. But use their servers & claim they're encrypted. Not sure if they really do.

[ghost]

Cross device support = Either use a public server or host your own with Nextcloud like integrations. Public servers are never recommended for Privacy reasons. Self hosting is expensive but a better option.

I have a bad taste with Brave. Their claims on their website are very shady, & crypto integration. They also claim to sync the device through Sync Chain. But use their servers & claim they're encrypted. Not sure if they really do.

I eventually switched back to FireFox because brave sync didn't work like I wanted. I only hope some day Thorium include adblock and sync feature to the android app so I can use it everywhere...

[foxjaw]

Discuss syncing in #6. Not here.
Although I don't care about it, as my android browsing workflow & desktop browsing workflow are substantially different. I would even opt out of syncing even if it's built-in.

As far as built-in adblocking goes, it's actually very CPU heavy on ARM devices like Android, which actually goes against @Alex313031 Thorium's performance guidelines. Just read uBlock Origin issues on performance. The more filters you add, the more CPU resources it take. Because every web request has to go through every filter (which are like 300k). On top of that, cosmetic filtering (removing empty ad banners) is even heavier, caz browser has to re-render the whole site again in order to make it look clean.

The most efficient adblocking is DNS filtering itself. On android, you can setup any private DNS like dns.adguard-dns.com, dns.nextdns.io, or doh.libredns.gr. I wouldn't recommend DNS filter apps either. Instead, selfhost your own local DNS, include host filters, caz you offload those filtering computations on your server. For more info, look at Linus's Pihole guide.

When it comes to blocking the JavaScript/CSS based ads like on YouTube, you can always have workarounds like NewPipe or R3v@nc3d.

[ghost]

Discuss syncing in #6. Not here.
Although I don't care about it, as my android browsing workflow & desktop browsing workflow are substantially different. I would even opt out of syncing even if it's built-in.

As far as built-in adblocking goes, it's actually very CPU heavy on ARM devices like Android, which actually goes against @Alex313031 Thorium's performance guidelines. Just read uBlock Origin issues on performance. The more filters you add, the more CPU resources it take. Because every web request has to go through every filter (which are like 300k). On top of that, cosmetic filtering (removing empty ad banners) is even heavier, caz browser has to re-render the whole site again in order to make it look clean.

The most efficient adblocking is DNS filtering itself. On android, you can setup any private DNS like dns.adguard-dns.com, dns.nextdns.io, or doh.libredns.gr. I wouldn't recommend DNS filter apps either. Instead, selfhost your own local DNS, include host filters, caz you offload those filtering computations on your server. For more info, look at Linus's Pihole guide.

When it comes to blocking the JavaScript/CSS based ads like on YouTube, you can always have workarounds like NewPipe or R3v@nc3d.

Well he can just add ABP or ublock like cromite did, easy to enable and disable

Besides most of the modern browsers come with some native adblocking support e.g., brave, cromite, firefox(extension support) and that's why they are famous.
In this era it is less likely for an chromium based browser to be liked by other people without native adblocking support.

[foxjaw]

@Subhashis2007 I do agree with you about a native adblocking support like ABP. But you should be aware of it's performance consequences. You can try it yourself by comparing the foreground battery usages of an adblock (enabled) vs adblock (disabled) of a same browser, such as cromite as you mentioned. I've tested and it's a night & day difference (adblocking filters increased battery usage by about 21% compared to without it).

I'm an adguard dns user with a browser that didn't have any adblocks & till this day haven't seen any ads on regular surfing.

Although some social media sites such as youtube, insta, etc & some news sites force sponsored/promoted ads, in which case you have to find an open source alternative.

[ghost]

@Subhashis2007 I do agree with you about a native adblocking support like ABP. But you should be aware of it's performance consequences. You can try it yourself by comparing the foreground battery usages of an adblock (enabled) vs adblock (disabled) of a same browser, such as cromite as you mentioned. I've tested and it's a night & day difference (adblocking filters increased battery usage by about 21% compared to without it).

I'm an adguard dns user with a browser that didn't have any adblocks & till this day haven't seen any ads on regular surfing.

Although some social media sites such as youtube, insta, etc & some news sites force sponsored/promoted ads, in which case you have to find an open source alternative.

Pretty simple, hit the disable button, or it is better off disabled by default. Besides using a 3rd party DNS is not much secure compared to native adblocking.

[foxjaw]

Pretty simple, hit the disable button, or it is better off disabled by default. Besides using a 3rd party DNS is not much secure compared to native adblocking.

Welp. I didn't open this feature request but, I'm pretty sure that @Alex313031 (if he starts development) won't prefer this because the goal of thorium project itself is performance (which adblock is actually against it).

[ghost]

Pretty simple, hit the disable button, or it is better off disabled by default. Besides using a 3rd party DNS is not much secure compared to native adblocking.

Welp. I didn't open this feature request but, I'm pretty sure that @Alex313031 (if he starts development) won't prefer this because the goal of thorium project itself is performance (which adblock is actually against it).

It is upto him entirely, as there're many users who like it and many who don't

Although I don't believe he'll continue the project because of some weird reasons that I don't wanna discuss about.

About that, things have been cleared nicely. https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Android/releases/tag/M119.0.6045.214

[foxjaw]

That apology doesn't explain anything about why he did all that political, ideological & immature acts inside the public project (which supposed to be private). I do hope he continues the development. But I believe the users had already made their choice.

[ghost]

Anyways, I am an user of thorium, tho I had some confusions I got it cleared by that blog, I need a good browser and thorium does the job wonderfully, I don't need to comment on anything when things are good and dev is considerate.

[psynyde]

That apology doesn't explain anything about why he did all that political, ideological & immature acts inside the public project (which supposed to be private). I do hope he continues the development. But I believe the users had already made their choice.

i don't think the apology part is relevant to this specific issue. legally he can do almost anything to this project. It's upto the user to chose what they'll use. personally I've switched to firefox based browser. but still i don't think he deserves this much criticism. after all it's open source.

[foxjaw]

@psynyde Sure. I believe the criticism happened because of some content creator on YouTube. And nothing like this happened on a scale of the project this big, which is why I think it made a big impact.

@Subhashis2007 Sure. But be aware of this incident & it may also happen in the future too. Just try to test the updated browser before jumping with it (like using with your family / friends, etc). Caz precaution is always better than damage control.

[foxjaw]

I don't think it's real. I believe twitter/X users post anything without a factual evidence (I'm skeptic even though I don't use brave).
The issue is going offtopic. Plz stick to the topic until it gets noticed by devs & get resolved.

[ghost]

@gz83 sorry for the tag, but is it under consideration??? About adding an adblocker??

[gz83]

If we were to add an ad blocker, we might need to restore extension support on the Android version. However, the existing patch to restore extension support for the Android version has not been updated for a long time and is no longer applicable.

It should also be noted that ad blockers cannot filter out all ads and will be banned by some websites. If conditions permit, you can set up DNS with ad filtering function.

[ghost]

If we were to add an ad blocker, we might need to restore extension support on the Android version. However, the existing patch to restore extension support for the Android version has not been updated for a long time and is no longer applicable.

It should also be noted that ad blockers cannot filter out all ads and will be banned by some websites. If conditions permit, you can set up DNS with ad filtering function.

Have you checked out cromite's ABP implementation? I suppose that's not an extension method

[psynyde]

Have you checked out cromite's ABP implementation? I suppose that's not an extension method

i double this. implementing something similar to chromite should be good enough.
yes it does break some sites and many adblocker detector can detect that (example: devuploads website). but these can be fixed by including a toggle switch.

[ghost]

Have you checked out cromite's ABP implementation? I suppose that's not an extension method

i double this. implementing something similar to chromite should be good enough. yes it does break some sites and many adblocker detector can detect that (example: devupload website). but these can be fixed by including a toggle switch.

Devuploads really detects all adblockers, ublock ABP, etc..

[gz83]

I may try to see if I can add an ad blocker, but please note this is a best effort and requires Alex's approval.

[ghost]

Thanks for considering it

[SevastianGit]

If we were to add an ad blocker, we might need to restore extension support on the Android version. However, the existing patch to restore extension support for the Android version has not been updated for a long time and is no longer applicable.

It should also be noted that ad blockers cannot filter out all ads and will be banned by some websites. If conditions permit, you can set up DNS with ad filtering function.

FOSS extension support in a Chromium browser in general would be awesome ngl, because yeah Cromite has an alright adblocker, but it just doesn't compare to the awesome power of Ublock Origin on Mull (FOSS FF Nightly fork with support for all PC FF extensions if you use Firefox collections or sideload I think. And with the right filters you generally can pass all anti-Adblockers) and not to mention many other great extensions like Dark Reader and TWP (Translate Web Pages) which blow Cromite's/Chromium's stock implementations of things like Dark theme pages out of the water. The only reason I currently stay on Cromite is lack of group tabs on Mull, but if there were to be a FOSS Android browser with all Chromium extensions support, it'd definitely be the top Android browser at least on my list, but I'm sure also for many others.

But well, aside from that, if Thorium would be Cromite but faster, I'd definitely switch to using it as well ^-^