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Google rolling out built-in ad blocker for Chrome Canary/Dev on Android

At the beginning of June, Google announced that it was working on an “ad filter” for Chrome that would be fully available for all users starting in 2018. The ad filter’s goal is to block advertisements on websites that are considered to be intrusive, and if you’re running Chrome Canary or Chrome Dev on Android, it looks like you can test out the ad filter now.

To access the ad filter/blocker, open Chrome and then go to Settings → Site settings → Ads. The Ads option is in between Pop-ups and Background sync, and it’s turned on by default. Tapping the Ads icon will allow you to toggle ads back on, and in Chrome, the ad filter is described as being a feature that will, “Block ads from sites that tend to show intrusive ads.”

Online advertisements are the reason so many sites (including 9to5Google) are free to access, but there’s a very big difference between appropriate and intrusive ads. Google will release its “Better Ads Standards” guideline in early 2018 to show site owners what constitutes as an appropriate advertisement and what doesn’t, but for the time being, it’ll be interesting to see how the ad filter works for now.

The feature will likely be unstable and have some bugs here and there considering that it’s not available in the regular, stable version of Chrome for Android yet (or any desktop variant of the browser for that matter), so test with caution if you want to give it a shot.


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Avatar for Joe Maring Joe Maring

Joe has been a writer and occasional video producer for 9to5Google since July 2017. Follow him on Twitter @JoeMaring1 and send all emails to joe@9to5mac.com.


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