I currently use Brave on my iPhone. It’s pretty good, since it has built-in ad and tracker blocking; but if there’s something better I’d like to know.
EDIT: I have just figured out a way to make the SnowHaze UX work for me. Here’s my homepage:
SnowHaze, for those who don’t know, is a privacy-focused FOSS browser for iOS, iPadOS, and (I believe) macOS, which includes features such as:
- Built-in ad and tracker blocking
- Custom content blocking
- No telemetry
- Custom search engines
- Custom homepages
- JavaScript blocking
- HTTPS forcing
- XSS and tracking URL warnings
- Passcode/biometric lock
- Cookie blocking
- Custom user agents
- Canvas blocking
- Idk, probably more
Safari + Adguard
Same. With iOS, there isn’t much of a point in using third party browsers, as they all have to use the Safari WebKit engine anyways.
Safari also feels great to use, especially with the new-ish bottom navigation layout. It doesn’t feel bloated with features, which I feel pretty much any other major browser is nowadays (Edge with its heavy Bing and “shopping” integration, for Brave I’m not sure on iOS but on desktop it has crypto stuff and whatnot built in).
AdGuard works great for the most part. I also use Vinegar for YouTube videos.
Yeah as much as I wish I could use some mobile form of Gecko as I’m still hanging on to Firefox in the face of the Google juggernaut there literally is no point in alternate browsers on iOS so you may as well pick the most native-feeling. I’ve been using AdGuard but this is the first I’m hearing of Vinegar, is it reliable?
It’s pretty reliable. For livestreams, it doesn’t always show correct timestamps and scrubbing back in time doesn’t work properly. But for videos it works well. It replaces the YouTube player with the default iOS video player and adds buttons to the top to change things like quality and the native player allows you to choose subtitles and set playback speed.
As it uses the native player, it also supports picture in picture, so you get that without YouTube Premium. It also works for YouTube embeds on other webpages.
Cool, cheers! I’ll give it a go later sounds well worth the £2.
Baking Soda is worth a shout out too for non YouTube videos. It’s the same developer who sells them both as a bundle.
To add to this, iOS 17 has added some great “Advanced Tracking and Fingerprint Protection” that can be turned on for all browsing.