Crystal Adblock – Block unwanted ads!

Worked well once upon a time then developer stopped caring at all. Last update was two years ago. App no longer blocks the most basic ads. Current status: Garbage that should be removed from the App Store.

UPDATE: I no longer recommend Crystal at all. It has been abandoned for many years. Likely it was abandoned immediately after it was created.<br/><br/>The block list is ancient to the point of being irrelevant. Every single ad I reported to the developer since the app was released years ago never got added to the blocklist. Any updates to the blocklist provided since release have long since stopped years ago.<br/><br/>The final release of the app merely added an &quot;acceptable ads&quot; feature: that is, enabling even more ads to get through its already weak defenses.

Was good while it lasted. Looks like the app and website have been abandoned

Its not blocking anything specially on YouTube.

It doesn't block everything yet but it has removed a great majority of them and has a nifty report website feature so they may review and add.<br/><br/>5 stars for now! Will re-review in ten days to give them time to review my corrections.<br/><br/>Update 1: False advertising... He accepts money to let ads through. Funny how this was conveniently left out or just as bad, buried in the TOS. <br/><br/>It's cool that you want the help the publishers, but at the cost of lying to your consumers. Be honest from the get go and you'll have a few less buyers, but very happy customers. I know I'll never see a refund, but I'd never have bought this app if I knew earlier<br/><br/>Update 2: the app is abandoned. DO NOT PURCHASE

Do not bother with this, get Adblock or AdGuard -- both are better even if you get the free version.<br/><br/>Does not block obnoxious ads on Ars Technica which move the page content when they show randomly, reported but they are still shown.<br/><br/>Does not block ads on adult sites. Allows &quot;acceptable&quot; ads (for me none of them are).<br/><br/>Does not block skimresources.com link tracking and monetization, things like Google abalytics, syndication and Outbrain still store data in your browser and track you. Same goes for Facebook tracking, ads on Twitter, etc.<br/><br/>Simply put, it's not even worth those 0.99$ when you can have better blocking for free.

Several years ago, during the initial Apple-promoted campaign to combat intrusive tracking across the web, is when Crystal got most of its users (and money). After the initial boost the money leveled off, so this content blocker had started whitelisting large advertisers— selling out its customers.

If you already had this app installed years back it will still work. However, if you try to open it to change setting (add to the white list, for example) or open it for the first time the app will crash.