Block ads and trackers in Safari

Blue Guard blocks ads and trackers in Safari on iPhone and iPad running iOS or iPadOS 17 or later. Safari blocking is free, with no account and no subscription.

Turn on Safari blocking

1. Install Blue Guard.
2. Go to Settings > Apps > Safari > Extensions.
3. Turn on Blue Guard.

Reload any pages you already have open.

What Safari blocking covers

Blue Guard gives Safari a list of rules and Safari applies them. Three kinds of rule are used:

• Block. The request is not made, so the resource is never downloaded.
• Hide. A page element matching a CSS selector is not displayed.
• Exception. Earlier rules are ignored for a site. Your allowed sites are held as exceptions.

Safari does the matching, so Blue Guard is not consulted as you browse and learns nothing about the pages you open. For the same reason, Safari blocking does not contribute to the counts on the Home screen.

Limits

Safari blocking applies to Safari and nothing else, so ads and trackers inside other apps carry on as before. Filtering those needs the second mechanism, which is covered in Block trackers in every app.

Safari limits how many rules a content blocker can hold. Blue Guard installs a single list, so a change that would exceed the limit is refused rather than partly applied, and Blue Guard tells you the change did not reach Safari.

What is stored

Blue Guard keeps nothing about the pages you visit, because Safari does the matching and never tells it what happened. Privacy and data sets out everything the app does keep.