Blocklists in the main window

Blocklists are subscriptions. Each entry in a hosts or domain list becomes a rule for every app: the list’s own action (block or allow), outgoing connections, any port, any protocol, forever. The Blocklists pane, under Lists in the sidebar, shows the lists you follow and how each is doing. Popular Blocklists… in the toolbar adds lists from a library of 60 well-known lists. Adding by address, removing, turning a list off and the refresh schedule live in Settings: Manage in Settings in the toolbar opens it. All Entries in the sidebar browses the entries of every list together. How a subscription becomes rules is in Blocklists. Every control is in Blocklists settings.

Reading the list

With no lists, the pane says No Blocklists, and “Choose publisher-maintained blocklists to block known trackers and malware for every app.”, with Choose Popular Blocklists….

One row per subscription:

• A raised-hand icon, red for a block list and green for an allow list.
• The name, and the host the list is downloaded from (or the full address when it has no host).
• N entries: how many entries the last successful refresh installed. The count is hidden while the row shows Failed.
• New (N), when entries a refresh added wait for review.
• Updated and a relative time, or Never updated when the list has not been fetched.
• A spinner while a refresh runs, or Failed in orange with the error in its help tag.

Example data.

Once you follow more than 8 lists, or while a query is typed, the toolbar search appears. Its prompt is “Search blocklists”. A query that matches nothing uses the system search-empty view.

In Rules, each installed entry carries the source badge “Blocklist: (name)” (or “Blocklist” when the list has no name). See Rules.

Refreshing

Refresh is in Settings › Blocklists: Refresh on each list, Refresh Now in a list’s details, and Refresh All for every list. A refresh only re-downloads lists that already exist, so it stays available when editing is locked. Outbound also refreshes each list on its own interval. A new list defaults to every 24 hours (86,400 seconds). Choose every hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, day or week in the list’s details in Settings. The list’s detail line says “Refreshes every day” for that default, or another interval in days, hours, or minutes.

The download sends If-None-Match when Outbound already holds a copy and an ETag, so the server can answer that nothing changed (HTTP 304) instead of sending the file again. That is the whole file or a not-modified answer, not a list of edited lines. A fetch that fails leaves the previous rules in place and marks the row Failed. The same happens when the body is not valid text, parses to no entries, or would shrink the list below 10% of its largest size (the larger of the entries installed now and the most it has ever had): the error says the previous rules stay in effect. A drop below 10% also says to remove the list and add it again if the smaller list is what you wanted.

Removing

Remove a list in Settings › Blocklists. Its rules go with it. To stop using a list without losing it, turn it off in its details instead: its entries are kept and it still refreshes. The banner is “Removed “(name)” and its rules.” Undo puts the list and its rules back. The next refresh fetches whatever the server has then.

A refresh of a list you already follow can drop block entries that the new copy no longer contains, without asking for approval again: that retirement is the list’s own update. Removing the list, or a block rule disappearing for any other reason, is an unblock and needs your usual approval before those connections are allowed. A new list does not by itself remove block rules that were already in force. An allow entry that disappears makes the rules tighter, not looser. See Security.