There are multiple ways of implementing ad blocking software on an Android smartphone or tablet. AdAway is a popular choice for those who don’t mind rooting their devices as it lets you modify the HOSTS file. For those who can’t or don’t want to root, the VPN method has become popular with DNS66 being a go-to application for many people. For a while, Samsung had an option called AdHell that utilized the Samsung Knox Standard SDK to block them. This option has been discontinued, but now Samsung Galaxy smartphone owners are able to use a new application called “Simple Ad Blocker for Samsung” (SABS).
We first highlighted the Adhell application in June of last year as it was a clever use of the SDK that Samsung implements for devices secured with Knox. The developer of Adhell actually worked for Samsung and was forced to remove it along with the publicly available source code. A few months later, XDA Senior Member FiendFyre stepped up and released Adhell 2, which was based off the original source code of the project. Adhell 2 has become obsolete and unsupported so XDA Senior Member NeedleGames filled the role and released this app better known as SABS.
Similar to the two previous Adhell releases, SABS is described as a “system-wide, rootless Ad Blocker, package disabler, permission manager and more” and works by using Samsung’s Knox SDK. There are a lot of Samsung devices out there with different versions of the Knox SDK, so NeedleGames says SABS “only focuses on Samsung Galaxy S8, S8+ and Note 8 devices with latest Android version.” However, they also note that it should work on all Samsung devices that are running Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher. Along with providing an ad blocker service, SABS can also disable system apps that are impossible to disable within the settings application without root. You can also use it to remove permissions from apps that you can’t usually control.
The latest update to SABS added the ability to block the theme store so that 3rd party themes from the XDA community would work on non rooted devices. The setup process can take some time as you need to complete tasks such as obtaining a license key directly from Samsung. NeedleGames has laid out the entire process in the official XDA thread linked below. For those who are interested, the application is open source and you can find the GitHub page for the project right here.
Check out SABS in our Android Apps and Games forum
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