Five new annoyance filters: a more customizable annoyance blocking

We talk a lot about ad blocking and much less about filters — although it is filters, along with their filtering rules, that make ad blocking possible. Fair enough: new filtering rules appear several times a day, but the set of AdGuard filters itself has remained quite stable over time.

The Annoyances filter is rather an exception. But what an exception!

Now all AdGuard Ad Blocker apps and extensions will have six annoyance filters instead of one. In addition to the already existing AdGuard Annoyances filter, there will be the Cookie Notices filter, Popups filter, Mobile App Banners filter, and others. If you wanted to get rid of all the annoyances at once, nothing will change for you. But if you found some pop-ups, app recommendations or cookie notifications useful, you can now keep them on the page, without being bothered by other kinds of annoyances.

What is the AdGuard Annoyances filter?

Created six years ago, the Annoyances filter was designed to block cookie notifications, pop-ups, third-party widgets, online assistant chats — any annoying elements on a web page that are not considered ads. Gradually, the filter expanded with new categories of annoyances (such as separate "Subscribe to newsletter" blocks); the number of filtering rules grew larger.

Why was the filter split?

Blocking everything at once was not to everyone's liking. Some users wanted to be able to use virtual chatbots, others preferred to choose how to deal with cookies themselves. We believe that the freedom to choose is an important value for users, and customizability is a useful quality for the product. So we've split the Annoyances filter so that you can block only what you need.

What will the new filters do?

The original Annoyances filter remains unchanged — you can turn it on to block all annoyances at once. But it comes with five new filters, which are responsible for specific categories:

• AdGuard Cookie Notices filter blocks cookie notices on web pages,
• AdGuard Popups filter blocks all kinds of non-functional pop-ups: promotion notifications, share link suggestions or newsletter signups, and suchlike,
• AdGuard Mobile App Banners filter blocks banners inviting you to download an app,
• AdGuard Widgets filter blocks virtual assistant widgets, support chats, and other third-party widgets,
• AdGuard Other Annoyances filter blocks irritating elements on web pages that do not fall under the popular categories of annoyances.

For a full look at all the changes and the new filter contents, check out our GitHub repository.

Where are the new filters located?

Right where you'll find the Annoyances filter: in the Annoyances section. The new filters are available in AdGuard Browser extension as well as in AdGuard for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. Stay tuned: soon they will also be implemented in AdGuard for Safari.

Note: if you choose to enable the main filter, the others will only duplicate parts of it, so you can turn them off. And vice versa: if you want to enable only certain categories, don't forget to disable the main Annoyances filter.