AdGuard v7.8 for Windows: Small pre-holiday improvements and enhanced Browsing Security

Feeling Christmas yet? We wanted to boost the festive spirit – and brought you a small gift: AdGuard v7.8 for Windows.

We once again reviewed GitHub repo – and realized that we'd been working for almost six months on version 7.7. And less than two months on v7.8. Yes, there were fewer tasks in this version, but we did a good job on improving everything: Browsing Security, network drivers, CoreLibs and DNSLibs, other minor features, and – hopefully – your user experience.

We're getting better. We're working faster.

Browsing Security functions in a new way

Browsing Security is a module that blocks requests to malicious and phishing websites. You might have seen a nice looking banner caringly stating "AdGuard has blocked access to this page": that's what Browsing Security does.

We've upgraded this module. It functions in a new way now – the Internet is safer than ever before!

What we've changed: now, Browsing Security uses the protocol Safe Browsing API v2 instead of Lookup API. Here's what that means.

Previously, every time you visited a website, Browsing Security would send requests to a server containing a list of malicious and phishing domains to check whether the website could be dangerous. That method had a couple of imperfections: firstly, sending the request took up some time. Secondly, this delay carried some danger in itself: this time could be enough for a malicious code to be executed.

We took care of it: now the Browsing Security database of dangerous domains is stored locally on your computer, and the application contacts the server from time to time to update it. This method is much safer – and much faster. And no, it won't affect your device's memory at all. But it will improve the app's performance.

If you want to learn more about how Browsing Security used to function and how it is functioning now, visit our Knowledge Base.

WFP and TDI network drivers

We've also updated and enhanced our network drivers for Windows – WFP and TDI. Both have been helpful, among other things, to improve compatibility with other applications.

Other good stuff

And of course, there is no release without updating CoreLibs, our main filtering engine, and DNSLibs, our C++ library. Meet their new versions: more flexible, more powerful.

As always: minor bugs have been fixed.

Check the complete list of changes on GitHub, update the application or download it on our website, and share your impressions with us. We really appreciate your feedback.

Hope that your holidays will be safer with AdGuard.