block “GET - On the App Store” link ads in Mobile Safari

Question

A lot of mobile optimised web sites display App Store links on the top of the page.

How to block this annoying ads? I already run and ad blocker for iOS.

Answer 1

I’m afraid the answer is you can’t block them, at least not through a setting in iOS or a Content Blocker extension for Safari. There are patches available for jailbroken devices though.

These ads are shown through the “Smart App Banners” feature of Safari. As far as I know, there is no setting in iOS to turn them off. Because of the way Safari Content Blocker extensions work, I also don’t think they can block the HTML tag that tells Safari to display the ad.

I might just be wrong, but other sources (see: blog post, reddit thread) also indicate these banners can’t be easily disabled.

At least Safari does seem to remember that you don’t want to see an ad for a particular app (or on a particular site, I’m not sure) if you close the banner using the “⨯” button on the left.