It consistently blocked package tracking links from FedEx and UPS and seemed to prevent Twitter embeds from showing up on websites as well. I occasionally noticed Adblock getting a little overzealous. It does its job well but doesn't really stand out from the crowd until you add its Pro features. Having tested out a few other top-tier adblockers, there isn't much separating them from Magic Lasso. (Image credit: Nathan Alderman for iMore) To add sites to your allowed list, you'll have to take a side trip into an obscure corner of System Preferences. If you ever want to switch Magic Lasso off entirely, you can do so with a quick toggle straight from its menubar icon in Safari on the Mac or via the Magic Lasso app on iDevices. If you want to ruthlessly crush all online advertisers, you can toggle those allowed ads off as well. I never minded it or felt like it clogged up or slowed down my browsing. In practice, this seemed to mean allowing modest text ads on the margins of a select handful of sites. It makes note of which sites its users most frequently add to its 'Allowed' list - though not which specific users allow which sites - and lets you permit those ads as well by default. On Macs, you might have to click the 'Restore Purchases' button iOS apps seem to get with the program without any prompting.īy default, Magic Lasso rewards sites with respectful, non-intrusive ads through its community allowlist, which the company says draws on a base of 200,000 users. In my tests, videos sometimes stopped for a second or two where an ad was supposed to be but then kept right on rolling.īecause subscriptions work via your Apple ID and App Store account, one subscription on one platform will seamlessly follow you to any and all of your other devices. A Pro subscription ends those irritations, at least when you're visiting YouTube through Safari on a Mac. And I'm still upset about the time my four-year-old, innocently watching videos about fire trucks, got treated to a mid-video advertisement for bulletproof body armor.

I would gladly welcome that feature every time election season turns every YouTube video into a stress-inducing game of political ad roulette, if only for the sake of my mental health. Most enticingly, Pro kicks 10 different kinds of YouTube ads to the curb, including preroll and midroll ads and paid promotional videos Pro also blocks cookie configuration menus, pop-up privacy notices, and other online aggravations. For laptop users, the app boasts that its Battery Boost feature can increase battery life while browsing by up to 50% by blocking custom JavaScript code, unscrupulous pages' sneaky attempts to highjack your processing power to mine cryptocurrency on the sly, and other power-hungry tricks advertisers conceal beneath the web's shiny surface. Paying up for Pro unlocks additional useful abilities.

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