Hello, HN! I got tired of seeing so many ads, paywalls and newsletter popups in Safari, so I built a simple JavaScript blocker.
Add any site to JavaSnipt and it can't load external JS files. Best of all, you can set blocking on a per-domain basis. That way YouTube keeps working, but some news site overloaded with trackers can't kill your battery with ads.
The app is buy once, own forever. $2 gets you the iOS and macOS version. Both are native apps - I spent a lot of time polishing the macOS version to be a simple, fast, Mac-assed SwiftUI/AppKit app.
Yes and yes. It's essential to my daily browsing, to the point it sucks to wipe my own data while developing.
Text-based sites like (most news orgs, blogs) work just fine. Blocking JS even disables the paywall for some.
The sites that break down are YouTube and other sites with lots of interactivity. E-commerce, restaurants, Pinterest, anybody with a complicated frontend.
That's why the JavaSnipt default is "allow JS everywhere except on domains you block." I've tried disabling JavaScript at the system level (iOS Settings -> Safari -> Advanced) and it's really not a good experience. You constantly have to turn it back on for your bank website or whatever.
5 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] threadAdd any site to JavaSnipt and it can't load external JS files. Best of all, you can set blocking on a per-domain basis. That way YouTube keeps working, but some news site overloaded with trackers can't kill your battery with ads.
The app is buy once, own forever. $2 gets you the iOS and macOS version. Both are native apps - I spent a lot of time polishing the macOS version to be a simple, fast, Mac-assed SwiftUI/AppKit app.
Text-based sites like (most news orgs, blogs) work just fine. Blocking JS even disables the paywall for some.
The sites that break down are YouTube and other sites with lots of interactivity. E-commerce, restaurants, Pinterest, anybody with a complicated frontend.
That's why the JavaSnipt default is "allow JS everywhere except on domains you block." I've tried disabling JavaScript at the system level (iOS Settings -> Safari -> Advanced) and it's really not a good experience. You constantly have to turn it back on for your bank website or whatever.