What to Use to Block Ads and Pop-Ups in 2026: A Guide

Ads grew from an annoyance into a tax on your traffic and battery: heavy scripts, autoplay videos and trackers weigh more than the article itself. The tools against them matured too, but in recent years the browser itself changed the rules: Chrome limited what extensions can do, and advice from five years ago no longer works word for word. Let's lay out the methods by level, from extension to DNS, with an honest caveat for each.

What Manifest V3 changed

Extensions in Chrome and browsers on its engine moved to Manifest V3: a blocker no longer freely intercepts requests and instead hands the browser ready rule lists, whose number is limited. Classic uBlock Origin therefore does not work in Chrome, and a lighter version, uBlock Origin Lite, replaced it: it handles typical ads, but fine cosmetic filters and instant list updates are gone. Firefox did not adopt these limits, and full blockers still live there. This is the year's main practical takeaway: if blocking is critical, your choice of browser is now part of it.

Level one: a browser extension

An extension remains the most precise tool: it sees the whole page, removes banners and the blank spaces under them, and cuts trackers and anti-adblock walls. Install one blocker, not three: layered ones break sites and slow loading more than the ads do. A proven setup: uBlock Origin in Firefox, uBlock Origin Lite or AdGuard in Chrome and its relatives. The same split applies on mobile: Firefox for Android supports extensions, and Safari on iOS works with content blockers from the App Store.

Level two: DNS filtering

With many devices, it is easier to cut ads before the browser, at name resolution. Ad network domains simply do not resolve, and requests to them never go out. There are three ways. Public filtering DNS: enter the address in network settings or Android's Private DNS, and ads thin out across the device, apps included. A home filter such as AdGuard Home or Pi-hole on a mini computer or router: shared rules for the whole home, from TV to vacuum cleaner, plus clear statistics of who contacts what. And filtering on the router itself, if the firmware can do it. To see how name resolution works and what exactly such a filter replaces, use our DNS lookup.

The limit of this level is plain: DNS does not see the page. It will not remove ads a site serves from its own domain, or the empty frames left by cut banners. So a DNS filter and an extension work as layers: the first clears the bulk on all devices, and the second finishes the job where you read.

Phones: a short recipe

On Android the least noticeable way is Private DNS in network settings: enter a filtering server's name, and ads thin out in all apps with nothing to install. Keep Firefox with a full blocker as your browser. On iPhone, a Safari content blocker plus a filtering DNS profile closes off most of the junk. A fair caveat for both platforms: neither DNS nor a blocker removes ads inside video streams or native inserts in app feeds, because they come from the same domains as the content.

Pop-ups: why they break through

Browsers crush classic pop-ups themselves, and that checkbox in settings should stay on. Something else breaks through. Notifications: a site once wheedled permission out of you, and now "windows" arrive as system messages even with the browser closed; the cure is reviewing notification permissions and blocking the requests themselves. Click-unders: a tab opens on a click anywhere on the page, and a blocker with fresh lists keeps them in check. And redirects with "press allow to continue": that is pure social engineering, and the working defense is the habit of closing the page without pressing anything.

A word on ethics and allowlists

Ads feed most of the free internet. A sensible compromise: keep your blocker strict by default and allowlist sites you read regularly and trust. All these tools do it in two clicks. But do not switch off protection entirely at a random site's request: a good share of junk spreads through pushy "disable your blocker" messages.

We cover related topics separately: privacy on other people's networks in the article on public Wi-Fi, and the difference between filtering and encrypting traffic in our review of what a VPN does. A blocker does not make you invisible: it removes junk from your screen and trackers from the page, and that is its whole honest job. Other tools change your address and location, so do not mix their roles.