Opera Mini Brings Native Ad Blocking Feature to Windows 10 Mobile
After bringing built-in VPN, ad blocking, battery saver, and other features to their web browser, Opera has added a new ad-blocker feature to their Windows 10 Mobile app. This comes as a surprise, as Opera had stated earlier that they have nothing in the pipeline for Windows 10 Mobile.
With this update, the app has been bumped to version 9.1 with the ability to block banner ads from the web, which should, of course, ensure lower data usage and faster page loading. And this ad-blocking feature of the web browser is most welcomed, as Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 Mobiles still doesn’t support Extensions.
It is straightforward to turn on the ad blocker, all you have to do is go to Settings on the app, and you would find the block ads option, which is also the first option; enable that option and done! However, if you open the app after updating it, you would get a pop up to enable the adblocker feature.
After testing it out on various sites, I was impressed by the performance of it. It is like any normal ad blocking extension you would use, but what makes it stand out is that it is an inbuilt feature. I tried opening heavy sites like Windows Central, The Verge, and the difference was apparent. Same sites with an ad blocker turned on could open the sites 2x faster than when turned off.
Check out the screenshot to find the difference. As you can see, the photo on the left has the adblocker turned off, and you can see ads on the website, but on the right ad blocker is on, so you will not see any ads. This obviously will hurt the revenue of the websites, but will surely save your time and data.
