The previous release version of AdGuard for Mac came out right before Christmas, while this one comes out in time for Easter. Not that we see a trend here, just mentioning a fun fact that caught our attention. Back to business: our AdGuard for Mac 2.8 release version boasts two features and an important addition that we would like to put forward.

Settings export/import feature

We should start by mentioning the long-coveted settings export/import feature, that’s already been implemented in almost every other AdGuard product but the macOS version. This release rectifies such an unfortunate state of things. Yes indeed, now macOS users too can finally export and import their settings in bulk, we can hardly believe it ourselves!

Anti-DPI feature

Next, we have added an option that will hopefully improve your privacy — anti-DPI. Partially, it will prevent the Deep Packet Inspection systems of your ISP from detecting the websites you visit. While we understand that the DPI mechanism has been used for a long time for mostly advanced network management purposes, we still feel unease in regards to it being able to do such unpleasant things as data mining, internet censorship or plain and simple eavesdropping on users. So this anti-DPI function is our input in net neutrality, if you will.

HTTPS filtering Certificate and why you need it

You will henceforth be seeing more dialog screens while installing AdGuard. We can foresee a “why?” at this point, so here goes: AdGuard asks for a lot of permissions upon installation, it is true. And it does make a lot of changes to your system configuration, more importantly, it generates and installs a certificate to perform HTTPS filtering. Previously it was done without alerting the user. That knowledge might be enough to cause some jitters, we get that. And so it is very important for us to explain to our users that those permissions AdGuard asks for are crucial for quality filtering. After all, quality ad filtering is the reason behind installing AdGuard in the first place, right? So in a new dialog screen about this certificate, we firmly state our policy again: despite the permissions asked, we do not use the power gained over your system for any purpose whatsoever except filtering ads. Ever.

To top it all off, we have resolved the odd issue of the Browser Assistant icon going randomly gray while the application itself was running. As per usual, aside from the big stuff, we did some minor bug-fixing and updated CoreLibs and DNSLibs for a better user experience. Hope you appreciate!

As always, the complete list of changes can be seen on GitHub.

Your feedback is very welcome so please don't hesitate to share your thoughts and impressions with us here or on social networks. This will help us improve!