Ever since Chrome has added support for extensions, I’ve found myself flip-flopping between it and Firefox. Chrome’s speed is outstanding, but I still love the extensibility of Firefox as its extensions can integrate deeper within the browser. One area that’s bothered me is ad-blocking. Firefox can still do true ad-blocking where content is blocked before the URL is loaded, while in Chrome it is only possible to hide the ads after they are loaded by the browser. Which is an issue for me, as ad servers can cause delays in the loading of the main website. Plus less content means faster loading overall.

Today I wanted to drop a note about an application that I recently ran across that might have solved the ad-blocking issues for me without the need to run proxies that usually slow down the browsing process or are difficult to maintain and configure. Those who use Windows may know that you can block ads via the Windows hosts file. It’s a file that your PC uses to try to resolve domain names. If the domain name isn’t found there, the machine will then start looking to your external name server(s) (e.g. your internet provider, etc.). For years now there are people who have been using this file to block ads, and it works great most of the time. The only issues I ever had were that the file was cumbersome to keep updated, plus certain pages on the web become unusable. For example some video sites display ads before showing you the video. If the ad doesn’t not display, the video cannot be viewed.

Yesterday, though, I ran across a tool that seems to solve both of those issues, called HostsMan. It’s a tool that will help you keep your hosts file updated using online sources of ad lists. But it also supports exclusions, so that you can add in certain domains that should never be added to your file.

The only downside to using the hosts file to block ads is that you cannot white-list ads on a certain webpage, for instance. You may like a certain site but realize they are ad-supported. Unfortunately the hosts file is used separately per ‘request’ or item inside of a webpage and therefore cannot understand that you want to allow ads displayed within or alongside a certain page or domain.

But if you’re OK with that, I highly recommend this program to help speed up Chrome even more and keep your online experience (in all of your browsers) virtually ad-free.