Banish - Block 'Open in App‪'‬ 4+

Not really noticing much difference

I HATE popups and I HATE ads.

To be honest, I'm not really noticing much of a difference after a couple of days with Banish. Mostly, I see "login" popups on sites such as forums, social media, etc.. You know, the popups that happen after you scroll a bit and are in the middle of reading something. Disabling Java temporarily in Safari will kill the ads, but this also kills most websites or changes the layout drastically.

Hopefully this is because I'm on iPadOS 16.1.1 and maybe a future update to Banish will help. I only surf on an iPad and with Safari. I would pay much more than three bucks for an anti ad/anti-popup extension that is Safari-centric and continuously updated. The market is ripe for such a product!

I'm concurrently using other anti-ad & anti-popup extensions, but nothing seems to kill the "I'm in the middle of reading" popups that have an extremely negative effect on the user experience. It seems like it gets harder every year to keep popups out of my attention span. Bummer.

To be fair, maybe I misunderstood what Banish is meant to do.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your review! Could you share some of the sites where you saw those popups?

Doesn’t work for LinkedIn

I specifically bought and downloaded this app because I am trying to avoid automatically viewing LinkedIn profiles in the app when I click on a link for one in safari (a work related issue). For a while, I would be asked if I wanted to open the link in the app, I would simply hit cancel, and I would be able to view the page or profile from safari. Eventually that prompt stopped appearing altogether, and any time I clicked a link in safari it would automatically open in the LinkedIn app.

Looking for a way to resolve this, I downloaded this app. I enabled it through settings/extensions as instructed, and immediately I am encountering the same issue— clicking a link in safari takes me to automatically viewing the linked page from within the app. I’ve seen the developers be very helpful with issues in previous reviews, so I am hoping for some guidance here.

Developer Response ,

Sorry for the frustration. Banish is great at eliminating annoying popups on websites, but it sounds like the app is opening before Banish gets a chance to cleanup the website. Can you try long-pressing on a LinkedIn link and selecting "Open" (instead of "Open in LinkedIn"). If you do that once, it will become the default and happen from then on. Feel free to reach out to BanishForSafari@gmail.com

This is a godsend.

I was looking for all types of Adblockers and trying to change advance settings, but it was useless to stop those annoying and reason to completely leave a site: “Open in App.” This app fixed the awful pop ups, and i can use sites like Reddit without being constantly forced to try to use an app i don’t want on my phone or iPad. I champion Banish to everyone because it is my most important app on my apple products. When i do a full restore, it is 100% my first app i prioritize so i can start looking at the internet.