Adblock Plus for Android Now Available on Google Play, Offers Ad-Free App and Web Experience

| Updated: Tuesday, March 26, 2013, 15:24 [IST]

Adblock Plus, a native Android app which can filter the ads from third party apps and web pages has been launched by Adblockplus.org. The app is now available in Google Play Store to download for free. The original 'apk" file can also be downloaded from the official site Adblockplus.org.

The uniqueness of this application is that you don"t need to root your devices to use this app. Once this app is installed it will block all online ads when you are browsing or enjoying favorite apps like Angry Birds. This may be good news for users, but this is going to raise concern for third party Android app developers as they make their money mostly from these ads. This will also open up the possibility of many free apps disappearing from Play Store and become paid apps in the long run.

Adblock app was already available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera users, now it is being made available for Android users too. As per the information coming in, the app versions for Safari and IE versions are also getting ready for launch.

Though there is no official announcement regarding the Android version launch from the team behind this app, the About page discloses that Adblock Plus is an app that would work on the background and block or filter the ads as per the standard Adblock rules. The page also confirms that this app would work well for Android devices running on OS version 2.1 and above. You may have to set up this app once and choose to operate it in any of the 3 modes discussed below.

3 modes of Adblock Plus functioning

The three modes will decide the extent of web traffic filtering. If the Android device is rooted, then the installed Adblock Plus app can filter the whole web traffic, both mobile and Wifi. However, if the device is not rooted, again this app can work automatically and filter the Wifi traffic provided the Android device is on OS version 3.1 and higher. However, if the device is running on Android 3.0 or older OS versions, then we need to manually configure this app as a proxy server so that filtering rules can be defined. In those devices where we cannot set up a proxy server, this app won"t work.