Firefox integrates Brave's ad-blocking engine

Firefox 149 now includes Brave's open-source ad and tracker blocking engine adblock-rust. It is currently disabled by default, and neither a user interface nor default filter lists are provided yet.

The engine is written in Rust and uses the MPL-2.0 license. It supports network request blocking, cosmetic filtering, and uBlock Origin-compatible filter syntax.

To try it out, users need to enable the relevant settings in about:config and manually enter a filter list URL. When testing, Enhanced Tracking Protection must be turned off for the target site so that adblock-rust operates directly.

The article reports that when tested on Yahoo, ad slots remained in place while only the actual ad content was removed. Waterfox has also adopted adblock-rust based on Firefox's implementation, reflecting a broader trend of browsers sharing built-in content-blocking engines.