Can I download an adblock program for my ipad?

The iPadOS/iOS Ad Block APIs are only available for Safari. As such, direct Ad Blocking by third party browsers isn’t possible.

Your alternative strategy is to use a filtered DNS provider (such as Quad9 or Cloudflare 1111), but these services are primarily intended to block known malicious sites as opposed to providing configurable Ad Blocking.

Alternatively, you could connect to an external proxy service that filters all your traffic - some such services sometimes combining a paid VPN service offering.

Unless you have a specific reason to use the Chrome Browser - and are prepared to accept the many privacy issues associated with Google services - switching to a privacy focussed browser such as Safari or Firefox would be a sensible alternative to seeking third-party fixes.

Google (and its Chrome browser) create revenue for Google by serving Ads - and by skimming your data which it sells to any third party who is prepared to pay for it. Ad Blocking Chrome is effectively attempting to plug the holes in a sieve.

With Google, you are the commodity - and Chrome is just another way of facilitating data collection (and consequent serving of targeted Ads) by Google. Google are never going to help you block its reason to exist.

Okay - lets tackle this issue laterally and creatively...

If you are prepared to consider use of an alternative browser - ditching Chrome - we need to find a browser available across your three computers (of which, I presume, at least one is an Apple device). A perfect candidate is Firefox - which allows you to easily sync all your bookmarks across all your devices - and it’s available for nearly every platform in common use.

Now, we need to import your bookmarks - but at present, it is not a straightforward task to automate import from Chrome to Firefox on your Apple device. Instead, we’ll do this on one of your other devices. Here is the process described by Mozilla - the authors of Firefox:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-bookmarks-google-chrome

Now, assuming you will log-in to your Firefox account on all your devices, then all your bookmarks within Firefox will sync across all your computers, on all platforms, including your Apple devices. If you do some research yourself, you may be able to adapt this technique to other browsers if you prefer them.

With switching to Firefox, you will also benefit from switching to a privacy-focussed browser, that is designed to block nefarious content. Even if you choose to continue use of the Google Search Engine (most of us are still guilty of “Googling”) you will still considerably reduce your exposure to Google’s mining of your data.

If not using the native Safari browser in iPadOS/iOS, you still won’t be able to utilise a third-party Ad-blocker for your browsing, but Firefox will block a lot of unwanted content. Other mechanisms can still be explored to further suppress ad-content, if necessary, by using a proxy-service - but this subject is well beyond the scope of this suggested solution for your browser and your existing bookmarks.

I hope you find this helpful in showing you a method of resolving portability of your browser bookmarks/favourites.

LP

Ignoring all the privacy issues associated with Google products, the Chrome Browser has always been a memory hog on most systems - and nothing has changed in that regard. I’m not surprised to learn, in view of you being wedded to a Chromebook, that you are encountering issues there; consider its origin - Google!!!

Firefox has come a long way of recent years - and for many it is one of the best “independent” browsers available, plus it has a strong security and privacy focus; syncing cross-system is a breeze. On Microsoft Systems, Firefox is my personal “go to”, replacing both IE and Edge whose performance and stability are pretty poor. Only for a very small subset of websites, which only work correctly with IE/Edge or Chrome, will I even consider use these of these browsers. Firefox is high performance, secure and “portable” across all the major OSs that I regularly use on a professional basis.

Safari does not, as you say, support import of Bookmarks - but does benefit from supporting third-party content blockers across iPadOS/iOS/MacOS. For these Apple platforms - and for this reason - I personally choose (and recommend) use of Safari and forgo portability/integration of Bookmarks with Firefox - the latter being my secondary choice of browser on iPadOS/iOS. If you make a wish for Christmas, perhaps we can all hope that, one day, Apple will open it’s blocking-APIs to other browsers 🙂

So, in absence of the utopian solution that, at present, we cannot find for you, I regret that you have some tough choices to make. Only you can decide the path and choice of compromise that is most appropriate for you.

Best of luck with your eventual selection. I hope all of this has been of some help to you.

LP

AdGuard is one of the potential proxy-based solutions that I mentioned within my initial reply. AdGuard has an implementation flaw (from your perspective) in that, as a commercial operation, it white-lists advertisers that pay for the privilege of reaching your screen. All “blocking” is conducted at the remote proxy - and provides the potential security benefits of a VPN connection. AdBlock takes a subscription payment from you - and takes another payment from advertisers that wish to receive sympathetic treatment!

Compare this approach to that adopted by 1Blocker (a fully configurable content-blocker - for Safari...) that as an “independent” makes a stand against commercial white-listing revenue generation. Not only is it fully independent, with no interest in accepting payments from advertisers, but processing rules are “local” to - and configurable on - your device. The App is clever, in that the App doesn’t actually process the data - but instead creates a rule-set that it passes to Safari; Safari does all the hard work in “processing” the content.

The approach by 1Blocker is even more clever - in that it doesn’t simply “block” content after downloading it, but instead doesn’t even download elements that are blocked by the rule-set. This significantly boosts rendering performance and reduces the volume of data downloaded by the device - presenting (a) cost saving implications over mobile links, and (b) improves speed when operating over bandwidth constrained network connections. 1Blocker also goes way beyond basic Ad-Blocking.

You could experiment with General > Accessibility > Motion > Auto-Play Video Previews - setting to OFF - depending upon the website this may help suppressing auto-play of some video content.

Note that 1Blocker is fully configurable and customisable. You can selectively block any individual element of a webpage; launch the 1Blocker App - and see Custom/Hide Elements.

There is lots of help with links to guidance both within the 1Blocker App - and the on developers web pages. Being a fully configurable product, it’s not just “install-and-forget” to achieve specific filtering outcomes.

I hope you’ve found all this helpful in resolving your various needs and issues. I’ve about exhausted my practical (i.e., readily easy to implement) suggestions.

LP

With the exception of Google Drive/Photos, I stay away from using most anything else Google-based.

No Chrome Web browser or Google searching unless absolutely needed.

I use Firefox, Perfect Browser or Aloha Private Browser for most of my Web browsing and I use mainly DuckDuckGo and/or Yahoo search for the majority of my Web searches.

I am sure Google has plenty of data and info from me and everyone and every device and computer from around the world many times over!

You should generally only enable a single content blocker product in Safari at a time - as conflicts can occur. That said, 1Blocker has 8 separate modules that need to be enabled for it to work properly. No need to necessarily uninstall other Safari blockers - just disable them:

Settings > Safari > Content Blockers - enable all of the 1Blocker components (8) - disable others.

You should see the costs within the App - and you should also find free trial of the full feature set. You should note that the purchase cost covers all your Apple iPadOS/iOS and MacOS devices, under the single subscription.

It’s well worth looking at the associated help and tutorials to understand the various content blocking categories and filtering options.