Matisyahu's Blog

I mentioned it on a previous post about how I was getting strange behaviour when using YouTube even though I had added it to to my allow list. I was going through the AdGuard document regarding how one can create customer filters (link) so what I tried instead was to delete all the websites in my allow list then add them as a customer filter. For example, I added the following to my ‘User Rules’:

@@||youtube.com^$document

I cleared all the cookies and cache, opened Safari and logged into YouTube, everything just worked as it should. What I have done after knowing it is working as it should is to move my list of allowed websites from the ‘Allowlist’ to the ‘User Rules’ with the above formatting then started visiting random websites on the list with every one of them working as they should with ads being shown with no cosmetic issues while also making sure that the websites that I want the ads blocked are actually being blocked.

I’m unsure as to what the problem is but I have a feeling that it maybe a conflict between the browser and the extension regarding whether a content blocker is allowed nor not allowed to on a particular website then AdGuard with its own Allowlist where as by putting the websites under ‘User Rules’ it fully hands the managing of whether a filter is applied being up to the extension itself with the browser not playing a roll in it. The net result? the websites work a lot more reliably.

Edit: I forgot to mention what I meant by ‘weird behaviour’ with YouTube – on the main page where you are suggested content on the right hand side of the screen it was ‘faded’ out, when you click on a video the video player wasn’t rendered properly so that in default mode you couldn’t see the ‘Full Screen’ and ‘Air Play’ etc options, if you clicked on ‘Theatre Mode’ you could see those options then occasionally you’d seen the YouTube page not properly render to the size of the page but instead truncate the suggested video titles on the left hand side even though there was plenty of space etc.