Have you ever wondered why some people seem to be more productive than others? It is not because they are good at time management. The answer is that they have fewer distractions on web pages, because they have enabled AdGuard Browser Extension. They don’t waste their time trying to get through endless ad banners to find relevant information. Today we would like to introduce you to the improved version of the extension, that will make your browsing experience even more efficient.

New differential filters update

What is the core of any ad blocker? The correct answer is “filter lists”. Once AdGuard is enabled, rules in filter lists are responsible for making web pages look nice and clean. It’s essential to keep the filter lists up-to-date. But every time there is even a small change in a filter list, a problem occurs: the ad blocker needs to re-download the whole list. That sounds pretty inefficient, doesn’t it?

In this version we have added differential update capabilities. Now instead of fetching the entire filter list, the extension will only download the changes that were made in a list since the last update. This also helps us to achieve a more efficient and user-friendly experience by reducing bandwidth consumption, minimizing latency, and decreasing server load. To put it simply, now AdGuard can download filter lists updates much more frequently, so you will enjoy the most efficient ad blocking.

The differential filters update works automatically. If you want to redownload the full filter lists with the updates manually, go to Settings → Filters → Check for updates

Stealth Mode bug fix

We have also fixed the problem that occurred when users tried to access websites with enabled Stealth Mode options in the extension settings. Rules did not work correctly, so some websites wouldn’t open. We have fixed this issue, so now the rules will disable Stealth Mode when it’s necessary.

The full changelog of v4.3 is available on Github. If you encounter any problems, would like to leave feedback and/or offer new features, feel free to do it via Github issues.