Sure, ads are annoying when you're visiting websites, but have you ever been playing a game or using an app on your iPhone and tried hitting a part of the screen, only to have that bit of real estate taken over by an ad, which you just accidentally clicked? There's no way to eliminate ads from inside apps, right?

Wrong. You can eliminate all ads and control exactly what connections go in or out from your iPhone or iPad with this handy utility called Weblock -- which is free for a limited time.

(Photo : Weblock, FutureMind)

Weblock is a utility which can block all ads across your entire iPhone or iPad experience. That means not only ads on websites, but also YouTube ads, Hulu+ and Pandora ads, and banners in iOS apps. It also can block any social media networks or plugins for apps and websites, like those increasingly ubiquitous "Facebook Connect" buttons. It's perfect for gamers tired of dealing with Flappy Bird ads or privacy-conscious people who don't want Facebook or ad networks tracking their phone usage. Eliminating ads from web surfing can also speed up page load-time for people with older, slowing iDevices.

Just be aware that games, apps, and websites display ads for a reason: Those ads are usually their main source of revenue, so by using Weblock, you're taking away one of the most important methods that your go-to (albeit ad-laden) content providers use to keep providing that content (which is likely free for you).

How does Weblock manage to eliminate ads across your iOS device's many functions? A look into how to set it up answers that question. Don't worry, neither the answer nor Weblock's setup process is difficult to understand.

Setup and How it Works

When you first open Weblock, you'll see a screen with various options of filters for advertising, tracking, and social media networks you have the option of blocking. Weblock does a great job of pre-defining many mobile and generic ad networks, so if you want to start by eliminating as many as possible, just select all of them. If you then have a problem with a buggy app or game after enabling full ad protection, you always have the option of picking and choosing individual ad networks to block or allow.

(Photo : Screenshot: AppCodes)

But just because you selected a bunch of adservers to block doesn't mean Weblock will work yet. First you'll have to get the farthest left screen -- also called the "Hamburger menu" (some sleep-and-food-deprived coder must have thought those three Unicode lines stacked on top of each other looked tasty) -- to enable Weblock on your Apple device.

In that menu first, click "Enable Weblock." This seems obvious, but it's not the only step. Second, go to "Wi-Fi Proxy Setup." Weblock will give you a URL to copy at the top of the setup page, with clear instructions that direct you to go to your iPhone's main "Settings" app. Go there, and click on advanced settings "ⓘ" within your selected home WiFi. Scroll all the way to the bottom and paste the Weblock address in the "HTTP Proxy" Auto URL field. Congratulations! You've set your iOS device to manage all incoming connections through Weblock!

The fact that you have to specify a "proxy" address for your WiFi answers the question of how Weblock manages to keep ads from appearing, even within web-unrelated apps and games. It also belies Weblock's one major limitation.

Weblock works by using that list of blocked adservers as a set of connection rules for your phone. If any connection matches one of those rules (e.g., if a game tells your iPhone to connect to "annoyingpopups.com"), Weblock will tell your iPhone to connect to the address through the proxy you set up, which is just a dummy proxy that will block the connection attempt. Importantly, any non-ad connections do not go through a proxy server, so there's no degradation of speed for the Internet content you want to see.

Extended Use: Parental Controls

Since Weblock -- beyond the simple quick settings -- is basically a connection-control app, power users can use it to set up custom Whitelists, Blacklists, and Redirect lists, which is a great expanded functionality for parents that want to control what types of content their kids see on their iOS device. And parents can configure any iOS device connected to the same WiFi to all follow all the rules they created on their own iPhone.

(Photo : Screenshot: AppCodes)

And if you're not familiar with or comfortable setting up network blocking filters, Weblock has an extensive help section and FutureMind, the company behind the utility, says it's always open to respond to its users' questions or help requests.

The One Major Limitation

Here's the rub: once the kids are off-WiFi, or for that matter, once your iPhone is using a cellular connection, Weblock won't work. It's the biggest limitation of this otherwise pervasive adblocking software: because it uses a custom proxy setting, it only works for WiFi connections. If you're out and about using a public WiFi or your cellular connection, you'll still have to deal with ads across your iOS device.

Tap That App?

Yes, because in reality, WiFi filtering still makes Weblock a valuable app, since in practice a lot of everyone's daily iPhone and iPad use happens at home. And Weblock is especially worth the download since, according to BGR, it's free for a limited time (Hurry! It could revert to its $2 status at any time). Get Weblock for iOS here.

For Android users, get Adblock Plus. It's by the same company that makes those handy Firefox and Chrome extensions and it works in a similar way to Weblock -- but it's always free for Android users. You can get it here, but you'll have to sideload it, since Google doesn't want to support blocking all ads across your Android device.

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