Best ad blockers for iPhone and iPad

There's a nasty redirect ad floating around on most mobile sites this Christmas (sadly, including ours) that Google's having trouble eradicating. Luckily, you can get rid of it with an ad blocker: Here are our favorites!

If you're tired of all the ads but don't want to use Reader View every time you surf the web, you can add content blockers to your iPhone or iPad, which will put them out of sight and help keep your activities private while you're online.

Ad blockers work in Safari and are only available on devices that support 64-bit architecture. In order to use an ad blocker after you've downloaded it, you'll need to enable it in Settings on your iPhone or iPad.

How to block ads on your iPhone and iPad

Here are the best ad blockers for iPhone and iPad.

• Crystal
• 1Blocker
• Purify
• AdBlock
• AdGuard

Crystal

Crystal is my favorite iOS ad blocker, in part because of how easy it is to add websites to the Whitelist, which is important for helping my favorite blogs stay in business. It also allows for "non-intrusive advertising." I really don't have a big problem with ads unless they take over the screen and somehow keep me from enjoying content on a website. Crystal allows friendly ads through while blocking obnoxious ones. So if you'd like to continue helping all the blogs you read to generate a little ad revenue but are tired of wanting to throw your iPhone across the room when a big pop-up ad appears, Crystal can help.

If you don't need a highly customizable ad blocking program but do want to have a little room to decide how much advertising you want to allow to filter through, give Crystal a try.

• $0.99 - Download now

1Blocker

1Blocker is really customizable. You can set different rules for blocking ads, trackers, cookies, website comments, Twitter and Facebook widgets, adult websites, and more. Plus, you can add your favorite sites to the Whitelist (ahem, iMore) and block specific websites from access at all. You can also customize whether to block or allow cookies and page elements from specific sites.

1Blocker is free to download, but it's really more of a trial version. For a $4.99 in-app purchase, you'll be able to unlock the ability to use more than one feature at a time. If your ad-blocking needs are minimal, you'll have a great experience with the free download. But if you're looking at 1Blocker, it's probably because you want the advanced features, like custom rules, a Whitelist extension for Safari, and iCloud syncing so your ad block settings are synced across all your iOS devices.

If you really want to customize your web browsing experience, and like the idea of being able to set up rules for different websites, the full, in-app purchase of 1Blocker is worth it.

• Free with $4.99 in-app purchase Download now

Purify

Purify is probably the simplest ad blocker to use. It has additional features, like blocking images, scripts, and custom fonts (which cause page load slowdown), but if all you want to do is block ads and tracking, it's the bees' knees. My favorite feature is the Whitelist button in the Share Sheet. Crystal also has this feature, but I seem to use it more with Purify. When you enable Purify Whitelist in your Share Sheet in Safari, you can tap the Share button while visiting your favorite websites and tap the Purify Actions button to add the site.

Another cool feature with Purify is that you can block the type of additional content that can slow down page loads, like pictures. This can significantly improve your battery life, too.

If you want a simple ad blocker, plus a little help with faster website loading, Purify will (excuse the pun) purify the internet for you.

• $1.99 - Download now

AdBlock

AdBlock is a little different from the other ad blocking apps. It uses your iPhone or iPad's DNS proxy to facilitate blocking ads across your entire device, including apps, other web browsers, and games. You can use the DNS proxy to assign any IP address to a domain and block mobile trackers. You can also keep track of what your iPhone is up to so you can manually go in and block ads that may trickle through.

The Content Blocker, which works directly with Safari, allows you to create rules for blocking ads from different websites. You can also create a list of websites to block or allow ads with that you can sync across all of your devices

If you want to block all ads, including ones that pop up in your favorite free-to-play games, AdBlock is going to really make you happy.

• $1.99 - Download now

AdGuard

AdGuard blocks dozens of different types of ads to speed up your Safari browsing on iPhone and iPad. You can set up rules for specific websites and manually block ads from sites as you visit them using the Share sheet in Safari. You can also use at least two dozen preset filter lists, like EasyList, Malware Domains, and EasyPrivacy, on top of the AdGuard filters. It blocks trackers from social media sites and basically cleans up Safari so your browsing experience is smoother.

With the pro version of AdGuard for $1.99, you can add the ability to use a local DNS proxy to block ads outside of Safari in other web browsers and apps.

Get AdGuard for a clean, fast web browsing experience in Safari.

• Free - Download now

How do you block ads?

Do you have a favorite ad blocker for iPhone and iPad? Which one do you use and why does it stand out? Let us know in the comments.

Updated December 2017: Use ad blockers to make your reading experience better while nasty ads are still sneaking past Google's filters.