Best Ad Blocker for Mac

How to choose an ad blocker for Mac?

There are lots of different factors to weigh up when you’re choosing an ad blocker for your Mac. In the first place, we suggest that you think about what devices you need the ad blocker to work on, what kinds of ads you want to block (for example, pop-ups, animations, and banners), and whether the ad blocker will stop online trackers that follow you around. Some ad blockers also cost money, while others are free of charge.

A note from our team: 

 

Instead of testing lots of different ad blockers, save yourself some time and try MacKeeper’s StopAd browser extensions today. Designed especially for Macs and MacBooks, StopAd is an easy way to block annoying advertising and trackers.

 

To use this method:

1. Download and run MacKeeper.
2. Select StopAd from the left-hand side.
3. For Safari, click Enable and follow the on-screen instructions.
4. For Chrome, click Install, then in your browser, click Add to Chrome.
5. Now, when you visit a site with ads on it, StopAd will automatically kick in.

Top ad blockers for Mac

We’ve searched high and low to find you the best ad blocker for Mac, looking at what different solutions offer—and what they don’t.

For our test, unless stated otherwise, we used Chrome to visit gumtree.com, a typical ad-supported website. We also turned off Chrome’s built-in blocking features. Check out our guide on how to turn off pop-up blocker on Mac to see how we did this.

1. StopAd ad blocker for Mac

• Price: From $5.95 per month
• Developer: Clario

The StopAd ad blocker is built right into the MacKeeper app. Created especially for Macs, StopAd will halt annoying pop-ups, intrusive banners, and other pesky ads in Safari and Chrome.

StopAd will also protect your privacy by blocking online trackers, which some websites use to profile you, even after you’ve navigated to a different site.

Another feature of StopAd we like is that it blocks sites from sending you notifications, unless you want them to. In fact, the ability to choose what StopAd blocks and what it allows is a big part of what makes this tool so useful.

Installing the StopAd plugins on your Mac is easy. Simply open MacKeeper, select StopAd, and then follow the on-screen instructions to get StopAd for Safari and Chrome. When we visited our test page, StopAd blocked 6 ads and 12 trackers.

Ad blocking is just one part of what MacKeeper offers, and we think it’s important to know what’s in the whole package. MacKeeper also offers antivirus, adware blocking, junk cleaning, RAM optimization, and lots more. Unlike some of its rivals, MacKeeper is also Apple notarized and independently tested by AV-TEST, getting consistently high scores.

2. Adblock Plus

• Price: Free, Premium from $4 a month
• Developer: Eyeo

Adblock Plus is one of the most well-known free Mac ad blockers around. Available for Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Edge, Adblock Plus works with any desktop operating system. You can also get Adblock Plus for Android and iOS, meaning your mobile browsing experience can be ad-free too.

Adblock Plus will block ads, push notifications, and online trackers. Digging into the settings, we also discovered a Language Filter Lists feature, which lets you add or remove languages that you want Adblock Plus to block ads in.

If you sign up for the Premium version of Adblock Plus, you can also block cookie consent pop-ups, floating videos, newsletter pop-ups, and other irritating distractions.

One Adblock Plus feature we really like is Acceptable Ads. When this feature is enabled, Adblock Plus will allow some ads to be displayed if they comply with the criteria set by the Acceptable Ads Committee. That means you can have a pleasant browsing experience while supporting your favorite sites—and it generates income for Adblock Plus.

In our test, Adblock Plus found seven items, but this wasn’t broken down into ads and trackers. For our test, we disabled Acceptable Ads. With this feature enabled, there were no ads to block.

If you’ve tried AdBlock Plus and don’t get on with it, read our guide on how to disable AdBlock on Mac.

3. AdLock

• Price: From $3.50 per month
• Developer: AdLock

Created by a team in Slovakia, AdLock is a freemium ad blocking tool for macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and Android TV.

Adlock doesn’t have any kind of acceptable ads policy, but you can fine-tune the app’s rules. You also block online trackers, malicious requests, and redirects.

Unlock other ad blockers, AdLock is a separate app, and it installs a system extension, rather than a browser add-on. After installing the AdLock software, we had to give the extension various permissions and install an HTTPS certificate. According to the AdLock app, most websites hide ads with HTTPS, so this app can stop more ads than other ad blockers.

What AdLock’s approach means is that it offers system-wide protection from ads and trackers. In our test, AdLock immediately started blocking ads and trackers in Safari, Chrome, and several other browsers, recording blocked requests as it went along.

Unfortunately, we were unable to easily see how many ads and trackers AdLock was blocking on each page. This information may be buried in the settings somewhere, but we found the interface a little confusing.

Despite that, we like the way AdLock works, and think it’s definitely worth checking out.

4. Ghostery

• Price: Free
• Developer: Ghostery

Ghostery is a multi-platform ad blocker, available for Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera on desktop machines. You can also install it on Safari for iOS and iPadOS, as well as Edge and Firefox for Android.

Ghostery is completely free, but you can make donations to support the developer’s work. They also have a pretty cool merch shop, where you can buy things like T-shirts and hats featuring the company’s cute ghost logo.

Ghostery is a very visually attractive blocker. Visit a web page, then open Ghostery, and you’ll see a nice color-coded chart showing what tracking activity the extension has blocked. When we tested Ghostery, it found 10 activities and blocked seven trackers. Ghostery also blocked ads, but it didn’t tell us how many.

If you click on the blocking results, you can get more information about what trackers have been blocked and who they belong to.

In Ghostery’s settings, we found lots of options, including regional filters, custom filters, and lots more. Everything is simple to find and understand, which makes Ghostery easy for us to recommend.

5. uBlock Origin

• Price: Free
• Developer: Raymond Hill and Nik Rolls

If you’re looking for a good free Mac ad blocker, uBlock Origin is well worth your time. Ublock Origin is a free, open-source browser extension developed by Raymond Hill and Nik Rolls, and it’s available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera.

When we went to download uBlock Origin for Chrome, we discovered that it was no longer available. This is due to Google releasing Manifest V3, the latest version of its Chrome extensions platform. Because of certain changes in Manifest V3, the standard version of uBlock Origin doesn’t work anymore. For that reason, the uBlock Origin team has released uBlock Origin Lite, which works with the newest version of Chrome.

Despite this setback, uBlock Origin Lite still works well, and it blocked 20 ads and trackers on our test page. We were also able to use the Element Zapper mode, which lets you make anything on the current web page disappear. You can click on an image, an ad, text—anything—and it will instantly vanish.

uBlock Origin Lite is good, but it’s a cut-down experience, so we tried uBlock Origin for Firefox instead. Here, we had more features, and 25 elements were blocked. As well as the Element Zapper, we found buttons to disable certain features of uBlock Origin, to allow things like pop-ups and remote fonts. This means you have handy on-the-fly controls for every web page you visit.

6. Privacy Badger

• Price: Free
• Developer: Electronic Frontier Foundation

Here’s an interesting one for you. Privacy Badger is the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American non-profit organization focused on promoting and defending people’s digital rights. That work includes providing legal funds to fight what it sees as abusive legal threats.

Privacy Badger is, as its name suggests, a privacy tool. It’s designed to block online trackers, not ads, but it will also block ads if they’re tracking you.

In our test, Privacy Badger immediately found 13 potential trackers, but they weren’t all blocked. Instead, Privacy Badger gives you a series of sliders, one for each tracker. Move the sliders, and you can choose whether to block the domain, block only the cookies, or allow everything.

In Privacy Badger’s settings, you can customize a variety of things, including disabled sites and tracking domains. You can also export and import your own user data. We like that you can sync your data to the cloud as well.

If you’re most worried about online trackers following you around, then Privacy Badger is a good option. The lack of ad blocking is a little disappointing, though.

7. Hush

• Price: Free
• Developer: Oblador OB

When you visit most websites, you’ll immediately be asked to accept or reject cookies. These on-screen nags are a legal requirement in many countries, but they can still be annoying. Hush is a Safari extension designed to prevent these nags from appearing at all, so you don’t have to manually reject cookies every time.

Hush isn’t an ad blocker, though, and it won’t stop other kinds of online trackers. What we like most about Hush is that it’s simple, lightweight, and completely free of charge.

On most of the sites we visited, Hush did its job, preventing websites from nagging us about cookies and tracking. However, on the Gumtree site, Hush didn’t work at all, and this may be a problem on other sites too.

Hush is a very limited browser extension, for sure, but it’s good at what it sets out to do. The biggest drawback is the fact Hush is only available for Safari on Macs, iPhones, and iPads.

No more distractions!

If you’re anything like us, you don’t mind a few ads on your favorite websites, but when they start getting in the way, you need an easy way to block pop-ups on your Mac or MacBook. We’re also not keen on being followed around the internet by website owners and advertisers. The ad blockers we’ve looked at here will make your web browsing experiences smoother while protecting your privacy. You have lots of great free options, but some of the premium ad blockers are worth considering too.

However, at Clario Tech, we think that ad and tracker blocking should be just one small part of your Mac security and privacy protection. With MacKeeper, you get StopAd to block ads and trackers, but the tool works alongside antivirus and other privacy features—giving you all-around protection. Give it a try today.