Best and Safest Ad-Blockers for Firefox, Mozilla Adblockers

Contents

The best and safest ad-blockers for Firefox webbrowser and detailed instructions on how to use them

Why use uBlock Origin or Adblock Plus and not any other adblocker for Firefox?

Answer: Because uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus with the extension Element Hiding Helper gives you the possibility to manually block things you never want to see (other adblockers I have tried on Firefox doesn’t give you these options).

Note: Since these websites will show some images, I advice you to install an image blocker first (there is no way to disable images in Firefox without an image blocker).

uBlock Origin for Firefox

This adblocker is the perhaps the best of them all but more advanced and comes with the additional plus that it has no “acceptable” advertising built into the program, which means there is no need to disable anything as with the other adblockers. It also helps you keep your Ad-Blocker active and the webpage working, when you visit a website and it asks you to disable.

The other adblockers can’t visit certain sites without having to disable the adblocker for it to work, which of course is unacceptable unless one have an image blocker activated; but these problem largely won’t happen with this adblocker.

This adblocker is also more lightweight and takes less resources on your browser and hence speed up internet surfing. I have noticed some improvement my self since I started to use it. It’s manual blocking abilities is also great but not to be compared with Adblock Plus.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Note: “uBlock Origin” is not to be confused with the older and obsolete “uBlock” adblocker still around.

If people want to use uBlock Origin I would recommend that they have some other adblocker installed alongside as well in order to benefit from their additional blocking abilities, such as Adblock Plus which has superior manual blocking abilities. Please read the manual blocking abilities of Adblock Plus for Firefox in order to learn how to use a second adblocker alongside the main one.

Important: In order to make this adblocker work properly as the other adblockers, you need to enter settings and select additional blocking elements.

To enter settings, click on the icon and press the small gear icon on the top or anywhere on the black color seen in the box.

After you have enter settings, go to “3rd-party filters”, and select the following filter lists in addition to those already selected:

Adblock Warning Removal List‎
Anti-Adblock Killer | Reek‎
Anti-ThirdpartySocial
Fanboy’s Annoyance List
[also select all the languages you frequently surf the internet with further down in the list]

Note: Remember to press “Apply changes”.

Remember to scroll down and select all the languages you commonly surf the internet with also.

Note: With “Fanboy Annoyances List” and Fanboy “Anti-Thirdparty Social” enabled, you won’t need any other “Fanboy-Social Lists” or “Anti-Cookie Filters” since they are already included.

You can of course select many more filter lists if you want too.

As you can see, there are lots of filters to choose from and that one can add manually in this adblocker. But be aware though, the more filters you add (especially unselected malware domains), the more likely it is that websites will start to become broken.

For a lot more blocking lists that you can add manually, visit this website:

https://filterlists.com/

How to manually block things with uBlock Origin for Firefox

Important: To my knowledge, this information should apply to Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Microsoft Edge, so even though this information was specifically written for Chrome, I know the same information also applies to Opera and Firefox, and presumably the rest of them as well.

uBlock Origin is the most advanced and hence most complicated of all the adblockers, and has similar manual blocking abilities as Adblock Plus.

One way to block something with uBlock Origin is to right click on the adblock icon and press “block element”. However, since doing so is highly buggy and often results in elements being selected by itself randomly, it is best to avoid doing this and instead click on the adblock icon, and then clicking on the pipette icon.

This will enter the advanced blocking mode where you can manually select anything on the website, as you will notice when you move around on the page and it highlight things that you can block.

If you right click on something and press “block element”, this only allows you to block that specific item.

Note: In order to get the box visible where you are supposed to choose blocking rules (at least in the version as of this writing) you need to move the mouse to the lower right corner of the screen. This will enable or make visible the box.

Important: Another hassle with this program (at least in the version as of this writing) is that it is simply not enough (most of the time) to simply press on the code you want to generate. For example, when I clicked normally on an ##.avatar code on another website, the following code was generated:

Wrong:

###msg_342199_extra_info > .avatar > a[href^="http://www.example.com/forum/index.php"] > .avatar

Right:

##.avatar

This wrong code is completely useless (at least for our purposes) since it will only block the single avatar in question selected and only on that specific page. (Sometimes the code it gives from normal click does the trick, so you will have to test what works in different cases.)

What you need to do in order to make the program give you the right and exact code you want is to hold down the ctrl key (on the keyboard) while clicking on the code. This will generate the proper and exact code that you can see displayed in the box picture above, such as:

##article

Note: The website’s name will be added automatically to the code when you press “Create”.

If you press the “Preview” button while having selected an element, you will see what happens to the site. If it does as you intended, press “Create”. If you want to cancel the whole blocking process, just press the “esc” button on your keyboard or press “Quit”. If you want to pick something else, press “Pick”.

Note: The video box is completely removed in “Preview” mode and if I “Create” this rule it won’t be visible anymore on any page on this whole website unless they change the code.

If you want to remove a filter you made or add several of your own, right click the adblock icon and press “options”, then go to “my filters”. Here you can immediately edit, delete or add whatever you want (just remember to press “Apply changes” afterwards).

Note: In order to avoid having to shift unnecessarily between browsers just in order to generate a blocking rule and then have to copy the rule and manually add it into another webbrowser/adblocker afterwards, it would be easier to just have Adblock Plus installed alongside uBlock Origin on the same webbrowser that you use (as I do). If you do so, unsubscribe from all filter blocking lists in Adblock Plus for Chrome, Opera etc. so that there won’t occur any conflicts between the two programs, and whenever you want to block something that uBlock Origin can’t block, just use Adblock Plus instead since it certainly or most probably will get the work done, and let it be activated at the same time for provided the program is activated on the same webbrowser with your other adblocker, then you won’t have to move the blocking rule from one adblocker to another.

How to use Adblock Plus alongside another main Adblocker of your choice without any filter subscriptions activated:

You can also delete (x) the adblocking lists if you want.

I use both webbrowsers/adblockers when needed to generate different blocking rules that I can later also manually add into any other adblocker or webbrowser (not all webbrowsers support the same adblockers).

AdBlock for Firefox

AdBlock is not available for Firefox.

Read the AdBlock entry for Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and Microsoft Edge.

Adblock Plus for Firefox

This adblocker is the most popular for Firefox and has superb manual blocking abilities:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

However, this adblock allows non-intrusive ads (usually text ads only) by default but this option can be disabled in settings.

To go to Adblock Plus settings, press the adblock icon, then click “Filter preference”.

After having entered “Filter preferences”, go to “filter subscriptions” (it should be opened by default). Now if you look down to the left corner almost at the bottom, you will see a box that says: “Allow some non-intrusive advertising”, uncheck this box. Check and uncheck the same things as is shown on the left side of the image below in order to make it block as much ads as possible.

Problem: I don’t have the same filter lists available as you do in the image!

Solution: Yes I noticed when I installed Adblock Plus for Firefox from scratch that it does not give the user additional blocking abilities as in the Chrome or Opera version. But this is easily fixed, and I will give you direct links to great filters so you don’t have to worry about ads, cookies, warnings, tracking, etc.!

Note: Click the “open this dialogue” to automatically add and install the filter into your Adblock Plus program (or any Adblocker for that matter that is activated on any webbrowser).

Note: These links won’t work as a direct url, or if opened from a pdf or word document, but needs to be opened with a webbrowser that has an adblocker installed.

Fanboy Annoyances List

Hide and block social content, social widgets, social scripts and social icons.

Hides in page Pop-Ups and other annoyances; thereby substantially decreasing web page loading times and uncluttering them (this list also includes the popular Fanboy-Social List.)

Removes cookie and privacy warnings (this list also includes the popular Fanboy-Anti-Cookie Filters.)

Disable social media buttons used to share content on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and others are placed on almost every website that you visit. Even if you don’t click them, these buttons send requests to the social network’s servers which then uses the information to create a profile based on your browsing habits.

Adblock Plus can disable social media buttons from websites, ensuring that social networks cannot create a profile based on the websites you visit.

To enable this feature, open this dialogue and click Add.

EasyPrivacy - Disable Tracking

With every browsing session, there are multiple firms tracking your online activity and browsing history. Hundreds of ad agencies are tracking your every move. With Adblock Plus, you can easily disable most tracking and browse the web more anonymously.

According to Stanford University research, the EasyPrivacy tracking protection filters are the most efficient of all available tracking protection solutions.

To enable this feature, open this dialogue and click Add.

Disable Malware Domains

If your computer is slow at startup or riddled with pop-ups, it may be infected with malware. Computers infected with malware are vulnerable to all types of cyber attacks, including stolen identity. Infected computers can also be used to send spam emails or attack other computers or servers, stealing passwords, social security numbers, personal documents and credit card information.

Adblock Plus can be configured to block domains known to spread malware, protecting your computer against viruses, Trojan horses, worms, adware and spyware.

To enable this feature, open this dialogue and click Add.

Also add “AakList (Anti-Adblock Killer)” into your adblocker in order to remove additional websites’ adblock warnings against you using an adblocker by clicking this link:

abp:subscribe?location=https://raw.github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer/master/anti-adblock-killer-filters.txt&title=AakList (Anti-Adblock Killer)

Also add “Fanboy Anti-Facebook Filters” in order to remove all kinds of social media buttons and annoyances that does not get removed with the above mentioned filters by clicking this link:

abp:subscribe?location=https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-antifacebook.txt&title=Anti-facebook

Note: With “Fanboy Annoyances List” and “Fanboy Anti-Facebook Filters” enabled, you won’t need any other “Fanboy Social Blocking Lists” or “Anti-Cookie Filters” since they are already included.

As one can see in the above image of Adblock Plus for Firefox, there is an option to press a button at the top called “Add filter subscription” in order to manually add more filters for additional languages; and there is also an additional link button to press if what you wanted was not available in the list shown, but none of those lists are complete. Please visit this link for more complete Adblock blocking lists of all kinds and in various languages:

https://filterlists.com/

I don’t recall having much problems with ads showing themselves in Firefox webbrowser with Adblock Plus installed when I used it frequently even without additional language lists, but that might be because I surfed the internet with images off also most of the time.

Important: Also download and install “Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus” (I will explain why below in addition to the info already made available in the link):

https://adblockplus.org/en/elemhidehelper#installation (this links also contain some instructions on how to use the extension)

Alternative download link:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/elemhidehelper/

If you don’t install the above extension, you won’t be able to activate the more advanced Adblock Plus blocking abilities.

How to manually block things with Adblock Plus for Firefox

Don’t like some site “nagging about you using an adblock?”, or taking up space with things you don’t want to be in the way? Well, in Adblock Plus, click the adblock icon and press “Select an element to hide” (or right click on anything you want to block and click “block image”, “block frame” etc.) and follow the instructions. In fact, by doing this you can block anything (yes anything!) you don’t want to be shown.

Basic Blocking

If you want to use the basic blocking to block all specific images on a forum or website, you can right click an image you want to block and press “block image” (as seen in the basic blocking image above), and the program will give you different options of what to block, such as blocking the specific folder where all the images are located. You can also use the custom url the program gives you in order to block and choose what part of the site you want to block all specific images from yourself (see examples below).

This example in Adblock Plus is something you commonly will see after having clicked “block image”:

https://www.google.com/images/branding/googlelogo/2x/*

If you choose to block this, all images streamed from the last “2x” folder will be blocked.

If you block this in custom instead:

https://www.google.com/images/branding/*

Then all the images and folders inside the “branding” folder will be blocked, which includes the “/googlelogo/2x/” folders in the example above.

If you block like this:

https://www.google.com/images/branding/googlelogo/2x/googlelogo_color_272x92dp.png

Then will only the googlelogo_color_272x92dp.png get blocked.

If you blocked something wrong and the site don’t work as it should, click the adblock icon and press “Filter preferences”, then go to “Custom filters”. Here you will see all your custom filters. You can click on the filter making the problem and delete it (right click and delete) and try again.

Tips: If there are many custom filters sorting by hits usually shows the culprit since those that destroy sites tend to block too much.

Note: Pressing ctrl + a will mark every filter in the list, which then can be copied or deleted easily. Pressing ctrl + v will add many filters immediately into the custom filter list.

Advanced Blocking

In order to block something with advanced blocking in Adblock Plus, click the adblock icon, then press “select an element to hide”. This enables the more advanced blocking feature, as you will see when you move around on the page in order to highlight things to block (you can block anything it highlights from pictures, videos, frames, boxes, entire columns, video holders, avatar/image holders, etc.).

Can you guess what is missing in this picture?

For example, lets say I don’t like Facebook and want to remove the login screen completely? That can be done easily:

Note: It might be hard to see, but the red square is in fact surrounding the whole Facebook page from top to bottom.

If this is what you wanted to do, click with the mouse on what the program has selected for you. This brings us to the next step:

After having clicked on “Add element hiding rule”, this is what facebook in our example will look like:

Remember: In order to block all avatars, images or videos on a specific website, it is not enough to right click on the avatar or image and press “Block element” (as was explained above), since this only will generate a url rule in order to block that specific image or image folders on that website (but images can be streamed from all over the internet). What you need to do is to click on the Adblock Plus icon and press “Select an element to hide” in order to get it to do more advanced blocking so that the website’s code for displaying the images gets blocked instead.

Right:

Wrong:

In the Firefox version, when “Selecting an element to hide” you can click on anything directly as well as on elements close to it in order to generate a complete blocking rule. If a complete blocking rule appears, the following code will show itself:

Right:

example.com##.avatar
example.com##IMG[class="avatar"]
example.com##[class="avatar"]