[_a1_]

I'm using uMatrix and by default all javascripts are blacklisted until I explicitly enable it for the site. The downside of this is that lots of websites are broken, payment sites are non-functional, but after a week of building the whitelist, the web is somehow usable again.

[sneak]

The worst is when the site is totally blank without it, then you enable it, and there's no interactivity: just images and a few words of text. It was totally unnecessary after all.

[forgotmypw17]

That's why I stopped enabling it.

Because I've noticed a strong correlation with lack of accessibility and poor quality content I ended up regretting wasting my time reading.

[sekh60]

I do the same. What a sad state the web is such that it is completely worth it to spend a week or two building a whitelist just to make it palatable.

[dmm]

uMatrix hasn't been updated in a year and the repo has been archived: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532973

You'll probably have to let it go someday :(

[smichel17]

I'm well aware. But that day will be when it stops working, and right now it still works fine.

(Actually, it will be some time after that, since the day it stops working I will spend some time investigating how much work it would be to un-break it myself. The web can pry uMatrix from my cold, dead fingers. And I suspect I am not alone in feeling that way.)

[helmholtz]

You're not. uMatrix makes the web sane and I'm never lettign it go. What I did (on Firefox) is disable uMatrix in Private windows and I just go there for payment sites. All the rest of the wading through internet-crap is done from within the safe cocoon of uMatrix.

[colejohnson66]

Is there a reason to not use uBlock Origin? I’ll admit, I never used uMatrix, so I don’t know what it does; only adblockers.

[smichel17]

uMatrix is uBlock Origin (uBO) with 2 differences:

1) No cosmetic filtering.

2) A more powerful interface, as _underfl0w_ describes at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25302405

The key thing which that comment does not mention is that the interface enables a whitelist approach — block everything (read: as much as you want) by default and selectively allow certain types of content from certain sites.

This is important because of where your effort is spent.

With uBO, sites always work by default, but it requires manual effort — albeit mostly not by regular users — to stay up to date and blocking the latest trackers and annoyances. So, the amount of effort to keep uBO functioning is proportional to the rate of change in tracking. uBO is an arms race between advertisers and blocklist maintainers.

With uMatrix, all annoyances are gone by default, but often so is desired functionality. It requires manual effort to make the site work again, but once it works, it will continue to work until the site owner changes which types of resources must be loaded in order to function. So, the amount of effort required to keep uMatrix functioning is proportional to the rate of development, specifically major changes.

So, really, the two approaches take a different bet. uBO bets that trackers and ads will change less frequently than functionality. uMatrix bets the opposite. I know which bet I think is more reasonable. Advertisers have way more incentive to try and circumvent uBO than developers do to regularly break their site's functionality.

This all said, it works very well to use both. Having uBO installed means that when you're un-breaking sites in uMatrix, and you allow something that was actually advertising, uBO will usually catch it for you, so you don't have to see ads. This means you don't have to think quite so hard before allowing something in uMatrix, which makes the overall experience much more pleasant.

[mook]

Actually, you _can_ configure uBO to block third-party content by default (by turning on advanced user mode); however, it's not as good as uMatrix as there is no split of request type (script versus image, etc.) as well as no UI to manage subdomains. You'll have to do that last part by editing the text configuration manually.

[Karunamon]

I think that's a feature now, at least in what's shipping in Chrome. You can click "custom" on any website and select the resources that site is allowed to load, by type.

UI screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/o0UsSdP.png

[gorhill]

> no UI to manage subdomains

You can expand any base domain to see subdomains -- click where there is no text. You can also click the "all" cell to expand to see all subdomains.

[ivanche]

I use both, they work even better together! uMatrix for enabling JavaScript and cookies only on sites I care about, and uBlock Origin for some cosmetic filtering.

[_underfl0w_]

Not OP but it may have to do with how granular the control is - that's my reason anyway. uMatrix breaks down different types of elements into a literal matrix/grid by party, site, and element type (i.e. 1st or 3rd party, current site or e.g. js.stripe.com, cookies vs images vs scripts vs frames etc.) so you can, say, only allow cookies from the current site but block them from gstatic.com, block the javascript from analytics.cloudflare.com, and choose to allow embedded frames from hcaptcha.com, all by clicking cells in the grid.

[hobs]

I do the same for noscript - it doesnt take much - just whitelist the site I am on if it doesnt work the way I want, and if I am worried about a payment on some site I can temporarily allow everything on that tab.

That plus adblock makes the web almost... enjoyable.

[ce4]

I'm in the same boat (mobile + desktop), and agree. One needs to overcome the initial setup of the 80% most used sites. When that is done you get way less tweaking uMatrix. Improves speed, responsiveness, privacy, data usage and battery drain for me on my mobile. For quick one off article reads i load the page in Firefox Focus.