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Set up Blue Guard

Blue Guard has two blocking mechanisms and they are switched on in two different places, because iOS does not allow an app to enable its own Safari content blocker. Safari blocking is turned on in the Settings app, app-wide blocking inside Blue Guard. Neither depends on the other, so you can run one, both, or neither.

Turn on Safari blocking

The Safari extension is installed with the app and arrives switched off.

  1. Open Settings and tap Apps.
  2. Tap Safari, then Extensions.
  3. Under Content Blockers, turn on Blue Guard.

Safari applies the rules from the next page load onwards, so anything you already have open keeps whatever it loaded with until you reload it.

Check it took

Open Blue Guard, go to Settings, and look under Protection. Safari blocking should read On. If it reads Off the switch in the Settings app did not take, and tapping the row goes back there.

Choose what to block

Under Filters you decide which categories run. Ads, Trackers and Social widgets are on to begin with, and Annoyances starts off: blocking a consent platform can leave a gated page showing nothing at all, which is worse for the reader than the banner it was meant to remove.

Turn on app-wide blocking

App-wide blocking refuses tracker domains in every app instead of Safari alone. It costs nothing, arrives switched off, and asks iOS for a VPN configuration the first time you enable it.

  1. Open Blue Guard and go to Settings.
  2. Under Protection, turn on App-wide blocking.
  3. Tap Allow when iOS asks to add a VPN configuration, then authenticate if your device requires it.

The row shows the filter connecting, then connected.

iOS writes that VPN wording itself, and it is accurate: a packet tunnel is the only mechanism iOS gives an app for filtering domain lookups, so the prompt is how the filter runs at all. Blue Guard carries none of your traffic and connects to no systemBlue server, since systemBlue operates none.

See what it is doing

Go back to the Home screen. The figure is the number of lookups refused today, with a bar for each day of the past week, and the control above it narrows the figure to All, Ads, Trackers, Social or Other.

Safari blocking contributes nothing to this number. Safari does its own matching and reports none of it back, so there is nothing for Blue Guard to count.

Each total is a number against a date. No domain, address or page is recorded beside it, totals are kept for 30 days, and none of it is transmitted.

If a site stops working

Add the site under Settings > Exceptions > Allowed sites. The entry applies to app-wide blocking and Safari blocking together.