Overview and the protection switch

The Overview page tells you at a glance whether you're protected and what AdBolish has stopped.

The protection header

The bar at the top of Overview, Realtime and Exclusions is your control panel for protection as a whole. The Ad networks, Privacy, Threats and Content filters pages have their own card at the top instead, with on/off switches for just that kind of blocking.

• The switch turns protection on and off. Its label tells you the state:
  • Protection on: Filtering every app on this PC (system DNS routed) or Filtering lookups sent to 127.0.0.1 (not routed; see System DNS).
  • Protection off: Lookups pass through unfiltered. Everything still works; nothing is blocked.
  • Paused: Blocking resumes in N min. The switch turns amber. If it says Blocking resumes when bandwidth sharing is back on, sharing is off; see Bandwidth sharing.
  • Starting…: the blocklists are loading.
  • Not running: AdBolish couldn't start its filter. See Troubleshooting.
• Pause 5 min and Pause 1 hr stop blocking for that long, then resume automatically. Resume now appears while paused.
• Site broken? opens the Fixing a broken site page.
• The pill on the right shows System DNS (your routed adapters, or System DNS: not routed).
• Connecting… or Finishing an update… for a few seconds means the app is reconnecting to the protection service (for example while it updates itself). Filtering carries on meanwhile.

Banners can appear under the header. Each one is explained in Troubleshooting.

The tiles

• Blocked today, with the all-time total underneath.
• Domains blocked: unique domains, all time.
• Data saved (est.): an estimate at roughly 30 KB per blocked request.
• Networks stopped: how many networks of every kind (ads, trackers, threats and more), and the most active one.

The charts

• Blocked over time: blocked lookups, stacked by category. Switch the range with 1 h, 24 h or 7 d.
• Top networks: the busiest networks of every kind. Click a bar to open the page for its kind (Ad networks, Privacy, Threats or Content filters); Ad networks → opens Ad networks.
• What we block: the share of blocks by category (Advertising, Analytics, Social, Telemetry, Threats and others), and a Live feed of the latest blocks.
• Blocked per app: which programs on your PC tried to reach blocked domains. This needs the protection service; without it, it says Set up system-wide filtering to see which apps contact trackers.
• Most blocked domains: the top domains with their network, category, block count and when they were last seen. Allow adds the domain to your exclusions.

What usually goes wrong

• Everything reads zero. Nothing blocked yet. Browse a news site and watch this fill up. If it stays at zero while you browse, check the System DNS pill and any banner, then see Browsers and secure DNS.
• The pages are replaced by "Bandwidth sharing is off". AdBolish's pages only show while sharing is running. Click Turn sharing on in Settings. See Bandwidth sharing.
• The pages say "Nothing to show while protection isn't running." The filter failed to start. The message under it gives the technical reason; see Troubleshooting.