April 2020 • Macworld 17When you visit a site, the 1Blocker menu
bar button provides useful feedback. You can
opt to display a badge that notes how many
items were blocked. Click the button and click
Blocked Resources, and you can examine which
URLs were blocked. Unfortunately, probably
due to Apple’s rules about app interaction with
extensions, the 1Blocker labels for rules don’t
appear in that list, making it less useful in knowing
anything but the category of item a URL appears in.
The button lets you whitelist sites and set
https-only page requests, too. When you visit a
whitelisted site, a red heart appears as a badge
on the 1Blocker button.
Free and paid tiers of 1Blocker
1Blocker has also overhauled how it charges
with its move into the Mac App Store. In this new
release, it offers a free version that allows turning
on a single category at a time, whitelisting sites,
and rule updates, though the updates are less
frequent than the paid release.
The paid subscription version lets you enable
any and all categories, provides twice-weekly rule
updates that are automatically downloaded, and
offers access to advanced customization features.
This includes the future return of the graphical
hide elements options.
Subscriptions are charged at £2.99 a month,
£14.99 a year (with a 14-day free trial), or £37.
for lifetime use. At this writing, the company
has an introductory sales promotion that drops