uBlock Origin Lite arrives on Safari with built-in filter lists and YouTube ad blocking

In a surpirsing move, uBlock Origin Lite has launched on the Apple App Store, making it available for Safari users on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS. This release requires Safari 18.6 or later and is compatible with iOS 18.0, iPadOS 18.0, macOS 15.0, and visionOS 2.0 or higher. While previous versions supported only Chromium-based browsers on Windows and Linux, support was discontinued due to Google's removal of Manifest V2 extensions in Chromium, which impacted browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi.

With this Safari release, uBlock Origin Lite is built on Manifest V3, ensuring it meets compliance with both Safari’s and Chromium’s current extension models. The extension incorporates built-in filter lists including EasyList, EasyPrivacy, and Peter Lowe’s list, all enabled by default. Users can select from four filtering levels—No filtering, Basic, Optimal, and Complete—easily configurable in the Safari extensions panel.

Advanced users can enable additional filter lists from the settings for more blocking options. The extension also includes an element zapper to temporarily hide page elements, though these return after a reload. Testing showed consistent ad blocking, including on YouTube, across iOS 18.6 and macOS 26.0 Beta. While the Lite version lacks some advanced features of the full uBlock Origin, it remains highly effective and it's recommended to disable other content blockers to avoid conflicts.