Not so long ago we announced a soon-to-come release of new Adguard for Android version, and we keep our promise by pushing out Adguard 2.5 today. Lots of new features and bugfixes are awaiting you, and some of them are HUGE. If you keep track of our blog, or forum, you already know that the killer news of this release is adding the HTTPS filtering. And yes, this means no more ads in YouTube, Facebook or Twitter – you name it.

But there are other reasons to get excited besides it. Read on to find out what are they. By the way, we even decided to hold promotion with discounts to celebrate this important release!

HTTPS filtering

Previously, ads which are loaded using HTTPS were ignored. Now Adguard can filter HTTPS protocol, which means that all such ads will be blocked. And these ads appear at many websites and apps – we already mentioned some of them above. To enable HTTPS filtering, simply go to Adguard settings -> HTTPS filtering. Put checkmark besides ‘Install certificate’ checkbox to install certificate, then enable ‘Filter HTTPS connections’ – all is ready now.

The upside of this is obviously huge, but there are a couple of drawbacks as well:

1. You will need to set a password or a lockscreen pattern. This is a system requirement with no workarounds.
2. You will get a ‘Network may be monitored’ notification after enabling HTTPS filtering and after each device reboot. This notification, however, can be swiped away.

HTTPS filtering works in two modes. By default, Adguard will filter all HTTPS connections to all domains, except for domains from the whitelist. The other mode allows you to filter HTTPS connections to the domains from the blacklist only. We recommend blacklist mode for those with older smartphones and tablets, as filtering all HTTPS connections can possibly cause performance drop.

Privacy and security

From the beginning, the main goal of HTTPS was to secure your data that you transfer via network. We take privacy and security issues very seriously, and that’s why we spent a lot of time to make sure you will not lose HTTPS advantages while filtering HTTPS protocol.

1. Your network traffic remains encrypted (because all the filtering happens inside your device).
2. Adguard checks server certificates by itself, and with any hint of danger filtering of this connection will be ceased.
3. Adguard is not affected by any SSL vulnerabilities which year 2015 was so rich of (it can be verified on SSL labs).
4. By default Adguard doesn’t filter connections with known bank domains and other websites with personal info. Since this beta we fixed a lot of bugs concerning HTTPS filtering.

For those who want full control and maximum security, blacklist filtering mode will probably suit more than default whitelist mode.

UI changes

[Added] New material icon #203
[Improved] Statistics detalization #48
[Changed] “Rate App” button was returned to “About” view in Amazon build #232
[Fixed] Changed selected text background in the Low level settings to differ from text color #260

Ad Blocking

[Changed] In Android 6.0 Adguard now automatically pauses protection in the battery saver mode (unless battery optimization is disabled for Adguard app) #247

We feel this is an important change. When Android is switched to power saving mode, all apps are cut off from internet. But Adguard VPN was still alive and receiving all the packets from these apps. Now we simply disable protection for the duration of power saving mode. When battery saver mode is off, we automatically enable protection back.

[Added] $replace modifier for basic rules #239
[Changed] $popup rules are applied to “redirect” responses now #281
[Changed] Optimized filtering speed #470
[Fixed] Adguard filters “application/xhtml” pages now #477
[Fixed] Issue with parser building wrong absolute URL #442

Added various language-specific and other filters:

“Anti-Adblock Killer | Reek” filter #420
Polish cookies filter #354
Persian/Farsi list #296
Finnish filter #293
Greek AdBlock filter #282
Bulgarian filter #259
Estonian filter #468

Compatibility

Telegram app #294
Yandex.Navigator #278
Sleipnir Mobile added to the browsers list #316
VIA browser added to the browsers list #381
Fixed Nimbus Note app sync issue #364
Zoiper and CSipSimple apps #422
Several banking apps were added to exceptions list #414, #397
IP Cam Viewer Pro #321
LiveJournal app #144
SK Telecom’s SMS and MMS apps #412
Nekto Me app #374
GoPro app compatibility with VPN #495
Disa app #499

Languages and translations

Added localizations to various languages:

Finnish language #293
Hungarian language #309
Chinese Traditional language #277
Bulgarian language #444
Croatian language #494
Vietnamese language #493
Dutch language #500

Other

[Added] An option to disable splash screen on Adguard launch #490
[Added] Warning for smartphone users about battery stats #366
[Added] Apus Browser support #449
[Added] Support for HTTP method REPORT #431
[Changed] Use Origin as Referer for websocket connections #429
[Changed] Make HTTPS whitelist, blacklist and apps exceptions available in “Low level settings” so you can easily reset it to default #457
[Changed] Added RelayForReddit Pro to the list of browsers (you don’t need premium to block ads in this app) #301
[Changed] Improved HTML content detection #348
[Fixed] Website can be broken because of invalid HTML inside a “noscript” tag #400
[Fixed] Adguard ignores tag href attribute while constructing an absolute URL #401
[Fixed] Adguard cannot detect HTML if there is an xml declaration at the document start #428
[Fixed] Glitch with swiping Adguard from the recent apps #292
[Fixed] Error while opening about.com #441
[Fixed] HTML parser should not filter “data:” URLs #417
[Fixed] AG code is injected into “noscript” tag #330
[Fixed] Error while parsing a style tag with embedded svg (lifehacker.com issue) #373
[Fixed] Issue with wrong stats calculated for apps listed in “pref.net.exclusions” #252
[Fixed] Wrong Firewall traffic stats #338
[Fixed] Fixed a bug with filtering of the apps from exceptions list #252
[Fixed] An issue with blocking POST requests and “keep-alive” HTTP connections #332

We hope you will like new Adguard and find its new features useful. Adguard will update to the new version automatically, just pay attention to its notifications. Stay tuned!