Important beta releases: Blokada Cloud, Blokada 5.17 for Android

Press Announcements
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Hi everyone, I hope you are well!

The updates

As per our release schedule, today we are releasing the following updates:

  • Blokada 5.17 for Android (beta) →

We also have some exciting news about a preview release of something we have been working on for quite some time: Blokada Cloud.

Blokada Cloud

Over the years, we have gotten quite a lot of reports from some of you about stability problems that occur on some devices. After a long development time we discovered that some of those problems are very hard to eliminate, because of device fragmentation and other aspects. So we decided to come up with another solution. After several months of development, we are excited to finally show it to you.

Screenshot 2021-09-24 at 15.59.18
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Blokada Cloud is our brand new DNS adblocking service that brings a lot of promise in terms of speed, reliability, and stability. Despite this is the first beta release, we are convinced it’s the better way that is finally going to help solve the issues some of you have been experiencing, and provide you a stable experience. Additionally, we think many users will also find it more convenient to use, and better in general.

Today we release the beta of Blokada Cloud. As we are rolling out this early preview, it is currently available to Plus users, however we plan to expand it as we improve the quality of the platform to be able to handle more users.

To try it yourself, simply log in to your account at https://app.blokada.org.
We recommend you have a look this intro guide for a quick how-to.

So, give it a go and let us know what you think. Of course, our existing Blokada 5 and Blokada 4 open source apps are still going to be maintained and developed, so you may keep using any of them as you see fit. In fact, we are just releasing another quite important update of Blokada 5.

Blokada 5.17 beta for Android

In this release we have made a major rewrite of the network detection code, that we believe is going to help make the per-network configuration more reliable for some users. We appreciate anyone who used to have problems with this feature, to report back to us (on this forum, or Telegram, etc).

This release also brings some maintenance fixes and improvements, in particular around wifi network detection.

As a reminder, you can perform a test of your adblocking configuration by visiting this link:

https://go.blokada.org/test

As usual we updated the blocklists, and translations. We also made some minor bugfixes. More in the changelog.

Keep the feedback coming, and enjoy using Blokada!

The recap

Just to recap, if you haven’t been following our announcements closely, here are some shortcuts for the newest cool stuff we introduced:

Remember that using Blokada Plus or donating is what makes it possible for us to keep improving the app. Thanks!

Tap to Donate

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That is indeed very exciting news. Great job you all. It seems very efficient!!

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Does it or could it act as geo unblocking for Netflix US or so?

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Possibly in the future, we are looking into it.

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Few hours in, i must say you did a great job. It is very stable especially considering it’s a beta and using a VPN on top of it only when needed is an awesome improvement.

I did notice however that it seems to be blocking “less” request than blokada 5. For example Microsoft apps are constantly triggering a block on blokada 5 but I don’t see it appear in blokada Cloud at all. It might be a data display thing? I did configure the same block lists.
Also blokada 5 number of blocks on my device seems much higher by the hour than what I can see on blokada Cloud. (like double the amount). Again, maybe just the way the info is displayed.

Anyway. Very happy with it. Can’t wait to see where you are gonna take it.
If you need someone to help test the next steps I’m up for it.

Cheers
Matt

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How will work with Blokada VPN?

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Thanks for the feedback!
There is currently a limitation in the stats where only the last few records are counted, even though the activity is stored for up to 24 hours. This may be the reason why you see a higher number in Blokada 5.
We will improve stats further on.

Also the blocklists are updated in more real time on Blokada Cloud, which may cause a slight difference in what is blocked at a particular time vs Blokada 5. You can always add a domain in your custom blocklist to make sure it’s always blocked, even in Blokada Cloud

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If you use app.blokada.org to download a WireGuard config file, Blokada Cloud will already be configured by default.
If you want to use Blokada VPN on Android, you can choose between using Blokada 5 (disabling blocklists and configuring private dns as shown in Blokada Cloud setup) or running the official WireGuard app with the config file that you downloaded from above.

There will be native app support also for Blokada Cloud in the future

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Got it. Thanks.
Great job.

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Will these changes allow for faster VPN speeds now?

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They might, since it will be possible to eliminate altogether the client-side adblocking. Please check the intro guide linked above for some tips how to setup VPN with Wireguard and Blokada Cloud.

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I was wondering. Could I add blokada Cloud directly to my router?
I currently replaced my provider DNS with cloudflare but what about using blokada Cloud?
Would it then filter all devices on the wifi network?
Cheers

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If you can enter a DoH address in there:
Sure

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Thanks. I will check that.

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Any comparison vs AdGuard DNS/Home?

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I have no personal experience but with a quick glance I’d say the main difference is that Blokada Cloud is a completely hands off and managed service where AdGuard Home requires you to configure and maintain your own server.
Also Blokada Cloud is hosted in multiple locations for a higher degree of reliability compared to connecting back to your home with your one server.

3 Likes
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Thanks for this great blokada cloud, it works like a charm, but it takes some time to applied an extension from the block list to apply

setup
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.

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Depending on how you’re checking this, there is currently a known limitation when going from “domain is allowed” to “domain is blocked”. Because of how DNS works, the “domain is allowed” may be cached for a long time on your end.

However going from “domain is blocked” to “domain is allowed” should be fast, for example if an app fails to work properly and you want to add an allowance on your own list.

We chose to have this behavior because of better performance. However if it becomes problematic we may change this behaviour further on in the beta testing.

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Seems like the same idea like nextdns :slight_smile:
Maybe we can “steal” some things from them.
Like blocklist last updated, longer log saving like one week, one month, 3 months, top devices if name provided, which blocklist blocked the request. There are many more things :slight_smile:

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Thanks, these are all good suggestions and yes we have a long list of improvements that will keep us busy for some time :slight_smile:

1 Like