Wipr 2.38 for macOS

If you’ve used the original Wipr, you already know the deal: it blocks, you browse, and nothing gets in the way. Wipr 2 tightens the same formula without piling on switches and dashboards. It leans entirely on Safari’s native content-blocking API, so pages load fast and the app itself barely touches your Mac’s resources.

Under the hood, the 2.38 update sharpens Wipr Extra — a set of rules that goes after cookie notices, nag screens, and leftover trackers that simpler blocklists miss. The improvements target many more websites, which means fewer interruptions without adding a single toggle to the interface. Accessibility got attention too, making the small preference window easier to navigate by keyboard and assistive technologies.

One thing experienced users should know: to run the full rule set, you’ll need to disable System Integrity Protection. It’s an extra step, and it’s not for everyone, but it’s how Wipr 2 reaches the corners of a page that sandboxed blockers can’t touch. The app works across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and even Vision Pro — same engine, same quiet approach.

Cookie consent blocking arrives in Wipr Extra

Wipr has always been the app you install once and forget about, but the jump to version 2 brought a few changes you actually feel day to day. The biggest is Wipr Extra — the layer that handles cookie consent popups, those “sign up for our newsletter” overlays, and the sticky social-media widgets that follow you down the page. In the 2.38 release, that layer got smarter on a long list of sites. You visit a recipe blog or a news site and the page just loads clean, without the usual gauntlet of dismiss buttons.

Accessibility also got a quiet tune-up. The preference window — small as it is — now behaves better with VoiceOver and keyboard navigation. If you rely on assistive tools to set up the app, the checkboxes and labels actually announce themselves properly now. It’s a small fix that makes the two-minute setup feel like two minutes instead of a wrestling match.

What didn’t change is how updates arrive. The blocklist refreshes twice a week in the background, so new tracker patterns get caught without you opening the app or clicking a thing.

How Wipr 2 stacks up against other Mac ad blockers

Put Wipr 2 next to something like AdGuard for Mac and the difference shows up immediately. AdGuard gives you a full dashboard — custom filters, per-site toggles, DNS-level blocking, a network activity log. That’s useful if you enjoy tuning your own setup, but it also means more moving parts and more CPU time. Wipr 2 goes the other way: you turn it on in Safari’s Extensions pane and you’re done. It uses Safari’s content-blocking API exclusively, so it never runs a background process or inspects your network traffic.

Then there’s 1Blocker, another Safari-native blocker that splits its feature set into separate toggle packs — ads, trackers, comments, social widgets, and so on. You get granular control, but you also get decisions to make. Wipr 2 bundles its blocking into one switch for ads and trackers, plus Wipr Extra for the annoyance layer. Fewer choices, fewer things to fiddle with. If you want a setup-and-forget tool, Wipr fits that shape better.

Compared to Ghostery, which runs as a standalone app and collects telemetry data unless you opt out, Wipr 2 doesn’t phone home with usage stats or crash reports. The developer’s privacy policy is a single sentence. That difference alone pulls a certain kind of user toward Wipr — the kind who’d rather trust the tool than manage the tool’s own privacy settings.

Bottom line: Wipr 2 trades configurability for simplicity. If you want a control panel, you have options. If you want Safari to load pages faster and show fewer distractions, Wipr 2 does that with the smallest footprint in the category.

Version 2.38 brings better blocking to more sites and a smoother experience for assistive tech.

• Wipr Extra improvements across many websites — fewer cookie prompts and leftover clutter.
• Accessibility improvements for keyboard navigation and assistive technology support.

• macOS 10.13 or later
• Runs on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs