Ad blockers for browsers work just fine, but what if you could block ads in all your apps? That is precisely what ‘AdHate’ offers – universal ad blocking across all apps in Windows! Details after the jump.
We have previously covered ad blocking related software here at Windows Clan. You’ve likely heard about AdFender which blocks ads in Edge, as well as the upcoming AdBlock for Edge extension.
A new ad blocker we just came across is something new altogether. It goes by the aggressive name of AdHate, and it claims to block ads in all apps in Windows.
Developed by one syrexide, AdHate goes beyond browser-based ad blockers by editing the system hosts file. I myself had to Google the use of a hosts file; I’ll save you time by telling you it’s a plain text file which stores information required for mapping host names – like windowsclan.com – with IP addresses – like 96.30.10.100. It can be found under C:WindowsSystem32driversetc.
AdHate smartly maps the hostnames of the ad hosts to 0.0.0.0 in the hosts file, so that data from them – which is of course just ads – are never loaded at all. Because it does this at system-level, it means you’ll stop seeing ads in programs like Skype, Spotify, Pandora, Hulu, and more.
AdHate uses the hosts file published by StevenBlack for blocking ads. You can see the entirety of the file on its repository [GitHub].
Although it initially would completely overwrite hosts, the latest version of AdHate simply appends the ad host addresses. This is great because if – as a power user – you have previously edited hosts, you can avoid worrying about it overwriting your work.
We’ve tested AdHate on Windows 10. It works quite well! Although it missed an ad here or there, it at least covered them throughout the system which is something completely unheard of to this writer.
AdHate can be downloaded from the link below. Keep in mind that you will first need to download and install Visual Studio 2013 or later (Microsoft’s development environment) in order to use it. It’s a bit of an odd requirement, but the way the developer has released the ad blocker, there’s no way around it.
Once downloaded, just launch the executable file and click on Block to stop seeing ads all across Windows.
Download AdHate [GitHub]
The post AdHate: Universal Ad Blocker For All Windows Apps appeared first on Windows Clan.
