17 years together! Top 17 AdGuard features — from our team and users

Each of us has a personal list of features we genuinely love about AdGuard — simply because they always come to the rescue, make life easier, or quietly and reliably do their job every single day.

To celebrate our 17th anniversary, we’ve put together the most honest collection of exactly those features. From the ones that are always front and center to those buried deep in settings. This includes our developers’ favorites and the features users most often rave about in social media comments and forums.

Get comfortable — we’re sharing our most beloved and useful picks.

Smart routes for your traffic

You’re the kind of person who takes their privacy seriously — VPN always on, no exceptions. Until some app decides it simply won’t cooperate with it, and on occasion some other one won’t work without it. So there you are, toggling VPN on and off like it’s your part-time job, slowly losing your mind.

These features will free you from that headache forever.

1. Exclusions in AdGuard VPN

When we asked the team which feature they love most, several people immediately named this one. In Exclusions, you can configure which apps and websites open directly and which work through the VPN. Traffic splits on its own, without your involvement — meaning no more finger gymnastics constantly toggling VPN on and off.

2. Saved locations in AdGuard VPN

AdGuard’s Head of Product admits that at first, Saved Locations seemed like just a nice bonus. There weren’t many servers, and who really jumps between countries every day? But gradually the use cases piled up: checking a banking site from abroad, watching football, paying for a subscription in the right currency. “At some point I caught myself always connecting to the same countries,” he says. “Now I open the tray menu and everything I need is right there in one click.” A small thing that saves real minutes.

3. Allowlist in AdGuard Ad Blocker

The Extensions team lead calls this feature simple but very useful. The Allowlist resolves a dilemma familiar to everyone: you like a website, you want to support its creators by seeing their ads, but turning off protection entirely is like going out in the rain without an umbrella. With the Allowlist you simply add the site to your blocker’s exceptions. One click — and filtering is disabled for that site, while the rest of the internet stays protected.

4. Inverted Allowlist in AdGuard Ad Blocker

Wait, haven’t we seen this one already? Not quite — here we’re talking about the inverted Allowlist. This feature was born from user feedback, since users play a decisive role in which features make it into AdGuard. It’s a mode where AdGuard takes a break on all sites except the ones you’ve added to the list yourself. Say you know a couple of particularly spam-heavy resources: you add them — and protection works precisely on those, leaving everything else untouched. A gem for those who don’t want total blocking but are tired of screaming banners in a few specific places.

Perfect order on the page

You open a favorite website — and there’s a banner taking up half the screen. Or an empty block left over because the blocker cut out the ad but forgot about the container itself. The screen looks like someone took a bite out of it. The next features bring perfect polish to your pages.

5. Custom filtering rules

For those who want to build their own protection system, there are custom filtering rules. Our CTO describes them philosophically: “The whole rules story is complicated, but very flexible.” Essentially, you take control of content into your own hands. You can create rules that will let some page elements load just fine while cutting others off before they even arrive. This is the choice of advanced users for whom standard filters aren’t enough, and who want to tune the internet down to the millimeter.

6. Block element on page

If hardcore scripts aren’t your thing, but you really want to remove that annoying banner and that other floating strip from your screen, a new hero steps in. Blocking elements on pages is one of the features in the AdGuard Assistant and a crowd favorite that gets praised frequently. You simply click Block ads on this website,” click on whatever is bothering you — and it disappears. Forever. Perfectionists call this their favorite feature, and we get it: the page becomes clean as an airbrushed magazine cover, and all without writing a single line of code.

7. Disable protection for 30 seconds

The favorite feature of our Editor-in-Chief. Sometimes a site breaks because of a poorly integrated script (and applying filtering to such elements may make things even worse), or you urgently need to see a page in its “original,” if spammy, form. Rather than fetching up the UI every time you want to turn the protection off and risk forgetting to turn it back on later, you simply pause protection for a short moment. Exactly thirty seconds later, AdGuard will silently return to its duties.

Full control under the hood (level: geek)

On milestone anniversaries like this, you think not only of the headline features but also of those that have quietly been working somewhere in the background all along, deep under the hood.

8. Userscripts

For geeks who always find the browser’s capabilities lacking, we have userscripts. AdGuard for Android and desktop can work as a full-featured script manager. This means you can expand website functionality directly through the blocker — add new buttons, redesign interfaces, and feel like a bit of a wizard. This topic periodically explodes in Reddit discussions, and for good reason.

9. Filtering log

One of the PR team lead’s favorites. Here’s how she describes her feelings: “You can watch in real time which trackers are knocking on your door and from where. You open a page and see the requests and blocks flying... All from one tiny little page!” The sight is mesmerizing and gives you a complete picture of what's happening.

10. Access to services on your terms with AdGuard Home

The Go team lead names one of his favorite scenarios: blocking services like YouTube, Reddit, and other social networks (including on a set schedule, only during certain hours). This helps you stay focused and eliminate distractions during work time.

11. Traffic control across all devices with AdGuard Home

Another favorite from the same colleague: the ability to monitor and control what’s actually happening on your devices — “to understand what [censored] is reaching out to what and block all of that stuff,” to give the exact quote.

12. TrustTunnel

The tool our CTO launches every day. TrustTunnel is our open-source client for custom connections. When a regular VPN isn’t enough — when you want not just to pick a server from a list but to build the entire route yourself — TrustTunnel gives you complete freedom. The CTO says: “I use it almost more than a regular VPN.” And these aren’t just empty words — for those who value independence online, this tool quickly becomes their primary one.

13. Connection log in TrustTunnel

Where does your traffic actually go? Connection log will tell you. The mobile development team lead explains: “This option is very helpful for analyzing where traffic went, so you can quickly add the necessary IPs to exceptions.” Essentially, you get an X-ray of your own connection.

Security, cleanliness, and quiet

These features work on the “set it and forget it” principle. Like superheroes fighting ads and tracking, bringing order to the internet while you sleep. The Extensions team lead calls this very philosophy the coolest part when talking about AdGuard Ad Blocker: “It works by itself, until one day you accidentally turn it off — and suddenly you see just how much advertising actually exists in the world.”

14. AdGuard Mail and Temp Mail integration

It’s not entirely fair to list a whole product as one of the top features, but we simply have to tell you about this one. While traffic flows along all the right routes, somewhere on the surface your personal inbox keeps filling up with spam. Every one-time site registration, every online store with a suspicious order form — and hello, a hundred unwanted emails.

For this we have AdGuard Mail with Temp Mail integration. Here’s how our content manager describes her experience: “I don’t even give my real address to anyone anymore. I get all the promo codes and newsletters on my temp address with a silly name (thanks to the devs for having a sense of humor!).”

You can also set up email relays to forward messages to your private address. This way, your main mailbox stays safe and practically gleams with cleanliness.

15. Tracking protection in AdGuard Ad Blocker

Privacy advocates particularly love this feature. The anti-tracking module doesn’t just remove ads — it strips UTM tags from links, hides your search queries, masks your IP address, and prevents sites from building your digital profile.

16. Phishing protection

The feature you completely forget about until it kicks in at the most unexpected moment. You click on an ordinary, unremarkable link, and in a fraction of a second AdGuard checks the site against its database. If the site is masquerading as a bank page or online store to steal your data, you’ll see a warning. Phishing protection is the feature you don’t think about — until it saves you from a fraudulent site.

17. Ad blocking inside apps and games

Mobile gamers feel the benefit of this feature most vividly. Anyone who has ever launched a free game knows: the ads don’t ask for permission. They burst in between levels, pop up over the interface, and steal precious seconds. In-app ad blocking is the feature for which our developers receive the warmest thanks from the gaming community.

A word from the author instead of a conclusion

As for me? I, as an SMM manager, value TrustTunnel and Exclusions in AdGuard VPN most of all. I spend a lot of time posting and replying on various social media platforms, and I wouldn’t want to get caught there with VPN protection off. But I also don’t want to toggle the protection every time I need to check my banking app or if I feel like watching an episode of my favorite show on a streaming platform, so Exclusions are a lifesaver. And the speed of TrustTunnel — have you seen it? Everything flies so fast that it’s easy to get addicted!

Of course, there are other favorites — Custom filters in AdGuard Ad Blocker, for instance. A while back I did a series of posts where I showed subscribers how to create their own rules and implement them in the app without deep coding knowledge. Honestly, I really struggled with it at the time — but that’s exactly why I came to love this feature. It taught me so much!

Thank you for staying with us all these 17 years. The internet keeps changing (and not always for the better), but we promise to keep clearing away the digital noise for you. Happy birthday, AdGuard!