Free ad blocker right in new Opera Mini for Android

May 2nd, 2016

Today we’re rolling out a new version of Opera Mini for Android that gives you 40% faster webpage-loading time and even more data savings.

Opera Mini now comes with a free, built-in ad blocker. That way, you don’t have to spend time finding and installing third-party apps to do your blocking.

Faster internet experience with free ad blocker

Online ads take up your phone’s limited screen space, and bloated ads with heavy tracking can slow down the browsing experience on your phone.

Opera Mini has always been a speed-demon browser, and that’s why it was important for us to bring ad blocking to our users. Opera Mini works seamlessly on slow connections, optimizes online video to reduce buffering delays, and compresses the size of webpages for faster browsing and massive data savings. Introducing ad blocking for faster webpage loading is just one more way we show our commitment to speed!

Ad blocker is a frequently-requested feature from you and the 120 million other people who browse with Opera Mini. By adding our ad blocking technology to Opera Mini for Android, we’re making sure you browse faster with less mobile-data usage and less distractions from your phone screen.

How can it be so fast? Ad blocking in Opera Mini happens on the Opera servers, before the ads even reach your phone. When ad blocking is enabled, Opera Mini does not even request the ad information from the website you’re visiting.

Even more data savings

Did you know that online ads also eat up your mobile data plan? Research by Enders Analysis shows that between 18 and 79% of data downloaded on smartphones is from ads.

Opera Mini already shrinks data from webpages by up to 90% for data savings and faster browsing. By also blocking ads, Opera Mini users can achieve even more data savings on top of that, so that less is deducted from a user’s mobile data allowance. That means users’ data packages can last even longer, for more news, more social media and more of the web.

How to enable ad blocker in Opera Mini

Under the “O” menu in Opera Mini, tap the data-savings summary. From there, simply toggle “block ads” on or off. On Android, the free ad blocker is available in both high- and extreme-savings modes. So easy, that you’ll want to make Opera Mini your new default browser.

In even more speed-demon features, today’s release of Opera Mini for Android also adds speed and performance improvements. This includes improved start-up time, improved installation time and a reduced binary size so that Opera Mini takes up less space on your handset. Plus, you can now add your favorite websites directly to your phone’s home screen, to keep them at your fingertips for fast access – you don’t even need to open your Opera Mini browser first!

Try ad blocker in Opera Mini for Android today and tell us what you think by adding a comment below. You can also ping us directly via @opera on Twitter.