Blokada blocking Play Services notification, but bypassing allows trackers & ads

Informations :
Downloaded Blokada from F-Droid (and up to date)
Using a Huawei P20 Pro with original ROM, on Android 10
Facing the issue since about a month
Blocklists used : only OISD
DNS settings : Cloudflare + no encryption


Hey Blokada community !

It’s my first post here. Please be tolerant if I do something wrong :slight_smile:

I’ve got two issues :


The first one is in some apps like Snapchat. When Blokada is on, the app does not load contents. Snaps aren’t loaded and stories are loading forever. Same for Discover. Once it was because Blokada (I was using more restrictive blocklists such as Energized, Goodbye Ads, Exodus & DuckDuckGo at this time) was blocking the cdn servers of Snapchat.
I whitelisted those, but the issue was still here. I then bypassed snapchat :pensive: .
Now that I use OISD only, CDNs servers aren’t blocked anymore, only statistics tools and such are. However, the same issue is occuring. The content isn’t loaded properly, and the snaps takes forever to reach my phone.
If you guys faced the same issue, I will be more than hapy to hear your experience and solutions !


The second one is the most important and the most annoying. It’s about the Google Play Services. In this context, we consider the parameters that are displayed in the top of this post.
When Blokada (+ OISD) is on, Play Services’s trackers are properly blocked. No GAds anywhere, plus many requests successfully blocked, without big issues, except one.
It’s about notifications.
When Blokada is on, I do not receive notifications such as social media notifications (Snapchat, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Messenger). In the same way, many notifications are not displayed at all. My banks cannot send me notifications when I make a purchase, as example.
I know that Play Services handle those notifications, and once Blokada is disabled, every notification suddenly appears with sometimes hours of delay.

I bypassed Play Services in Blokada. However, while doing this solves the notifications issue, it is kind of a nonsense. While Play Services are bypassed, Google trackers can track me properly, and Google can display Ads wherever they want.

I do not want to root / flash my device to install MicroG on it.

My question is :
Is there any way to block the Google Play Services trackers and ads BUT allow the requests to gather notifications ?

Maybe some of you guys found the addresses to whitelist in order to run Blokada over Play Services while still receiving notifications without any delay or issue…


Anyway, thanks for reading and for your tolerance for my first post, and if you have any solution or thoughs about those issues, please feel free to answer below ! :slight_smile:

Hello @mewshinyex, welcome to the community!

Here are some things that can help you:

  • For Snapchat:

1 [Important] Clean data and force stop of Blokada;
(I’m not sure if the merged_blocklist clears the hosts when you disable something because I haven’t tested it all yet, so I recommend clearing the app’s data)

1.1 Change DNS to your preferred one and disable DNS encryption. Test if Snapchat works;

1.2 Do not activate Energized - Social;

*** 2 If does not work, put on the whitelist:

aws.duplex.snapchat.com

us-central1-gcp.api.snapchat.com

pro-accounts.snapchat.com

mvm.snapchat.com

gcp.api.snapchat.com

pro-stories.snapchat.com

chat-gateway-prod.chat.snapchat.com

Hey ! Thanks for your answer and your very precise and useful advice :slight_smile:

I’ve cleared Blokada (force stop + erase data) & re-enabled OISD only. I then left encrypted DNS, but used the CloudFlare one (Blokada’s DNS seems to not always be functional).

I of course whitelisted Play services (not a good deal but no choice for now) to ensure receiving notifications, and Snapchat was working really fine without any hassle, even with encrypted CloudFlare DNS & OISD enabled. No need to whitelist anything as of now.

Thanks a lot for your answer and your useful advice, as well as your warm welcome :slight_smile:

Do you have any thoughs regarding the issue about notifications & Play Services ? With a such knowledge about queries in Blokada, I wonder that you may have thinked about before

A such list of what to blacklist/whitelist regarding Play Services would be gold !

Anyway, thanks again, my snaps are safe thanks to your answer !

heey @mewshinyex

I just analyze the problems and test them for a solution. The Energized Social list blocks all (without exception so far) social networks, just removing it completely solved your problem with Snapchat.

Now, About Discover and notifications; I need to check which hosts should be listed as allowed.
(Perhaps, allowing something like “firebase” “api” for the app you want, should deliver the proper notifications.)

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