The lack of support is in the other direction - Safari doesn't support uBlock Origin anymore. The only way to block ads is with Apple's Content Blocking API, which is fundamentally not how uBlock Origin works.

Interesting, didn't know that - why wasn't there the same kind of outcry as for Chrome API changes?

Safari lets extensions precompile a list of patterns to block and then it does the actual blocking. The extension never sees your browsing history or network requests.

Sounds a lot like what Chrome is bringing in.

Chrome has a limit on the amount of the items in the list.

Originally, Google wanted to max at 30k items, but after the outry, they increased it to 150k.

For comparison, my uBlock has currently 101k of net filters and 49k cosmetic filters.

Safari also has a limit, and it's low enough that plugin developers have had to split their work into multiple parallel plugins or even into standalone macOS applications.

I guess because Safari is relatively unimportant in terms of market share. Not totally unimportant, but not quite the same league.

Probably because of lack of usage of Safari. It was covered in some circles: https://adguard.com/en/blog/safari-adblock-extensions.html

I'm running uBlock Origin 1.16 on Safari 12.1.1 right now, unless I'm mistaken.

Apple hasn't completed the Extension Gallery deprecation process, but it will be entirely unusable with Safari 13.

Ah, thanks, damn. Might be time to give Firefox another shot.

Pardon my ignorance, but I installed ublock via the App Store in safari and it seems to work fine, am I mistaken?

Edit: I see it’s ublock, not ublock origin. What’s the difference?

uBlock is an unmaintained fork of uBlock Origin: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-is-comp...

If it's in the App Store, it's not even a fork, it's just some piece of software using the "uBlock" name.

Interesting. How do they differ fundamentally?

uBlock Origin uses the WebExtension API that is common to Chromium/Firefox. Going forward, Safari for iOS/macOS will only support Apple's Content Blocking API.

I absolutely detest the way Extensions in Safari are handled in Mojave. Is there any way to install them without the App Store?

Part of the logic is that many extensions are very dangerous to users: the Grammarly extension, for example, vacuums up everything you type and sends your history to their servers. Most normal people don’t realize the trouble they can get into when installing extensions. Extensions can be as privacy destructive as anything on the web.

That should be my choice, not Apple's. What if there's an addon I want to see everything I type?

Except:

1. The job of Safari isn't to be everything to everyone.

2. Most tech enthusiasts just install Firefox or Chrome anyway.

3. Your web browser is by far the most critical aspect of computer security for most users. It controls the entire trust chain between yourself and your online bank. Your browser validates the security certificates. Your browser decides what to do with the passwords you enter. Your browser decides what to show in the address bar.

4. We know that most casual web users have suffered great privacy violations from dodgy add-ons, either by disguising itself as a useful tool or via drive-by installation. This isn't a hypothetical fear. It's very real.

5. Apple's unique selling point is privacy and security. Anything they can do to ensure that your grandmother's browser isn't compromised should be prioritised and applauded.

6. You can add untrusted extensions using the Extension Builder by obtaining a free cryptographic certificate from Apple. It's not trivial but it's just the right amount of onerous to stop your grandmother from being defrauded.

I don't know anything about that specific extension, but ...

Isn't that exactly the sort of thing the Apple walled garden is supposed to protect against? Surely anything that functions as a key logger and browsing history recorder violates their terms of service?

I'm fairly confident that this doesn't happen in Mozilla's addons repository. As I recall from the Stylish incident (Stylish is a similar browsing history stealing extension) they were not allowed to put this extension in AMO with the history stealing code, but it was left untouched in the Google Play store.

Same. It's absolutely garbage that it requires a Mac App -- while there's workarounds for now, how much longer until they don't work either. It's a shame because I quite like Safari as a browser. Oh well, more incentive to switch back to Firefox!

Not the most up to fate, but exists: https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari

This will no longer be usable on Catalina unless someone else takes up the charge. The problem afaik is similar to what Chrome has done.