iOS 9: Safari Will Have Ad Blockers Very Soon

By Kamal Nayan - 11 Jun '15 03:33AM

Developers will be able to build ad blockers for Safari web browser in iOS 9, according to reports. Developers recently discovered that the Settings options and documentation might let them build apps focused on ad blocking and privacy.

Evidently, Apple is not promoting this feature heavily which is earthed deep in the iOS developer library.

The feature, called content blocking, uses an API that can remove elements such as images and cookies from Web views.

Content blocking allows developers to pass JSON files with a set of rules for images, popups, cookies, resources and other elements in the Safari browser. Safari screens incoming Web content without feeding browsing history back to the extension. Xcode, Apple's suite of tools for OS X and iOS, includes a template for such extensions, requiring developers only to edit the JSON file to add triggers and actions, cio-today.com noted.

"Xcode includes a content blocker app extension template that contains code to send your JSON file to Safari," Apple noted on its What's New in Safari blog. "Just edit the JSON file in the template to provide your own triggers and actions."