iOS 9 ad blockers are saving data and battery

Apple welcomed ad blockers with the recent release of iOS 9 and they’re benefitting users of iOS devices.

A study by The New York Times found that popular iOS 9 ad blockers are having a significant impact on the amount of data being consumed and the battery life of iOS devices.

Two tests were conducted using an iPhone 6 and three ad blockers: Purify, Crystal, and 1Blocker. One looked at the data consumed by the 50 most popular news websites with and without ad blockers enabled. The second test used a custom-built ad to cycle through popular websites with ads and without ads in an endless loop.

According to the report, “For a number of websites that contained mobile ads with a lot of data, Web page data sizes decreased significantly and load times accelerated enormously with ad blockers turned on.” Meanwhile, battery life also improved, though the difference was more modest.

As web pages were being loaded without ads, the study also found that load times were reduced. So not only can you conserve data by enabling an adblocker in iOS 9, but you can save yourself some time too.

It’s not always beneficial though; the study also found that pages loaded irregularly at times, sometimes with content missing.