How to filter ads on your G1

---

You can find the latest version of this app on the slideme app store.

http://slideme.org/application/adfree

This is the old thread, I started a new thread in the general section => http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...php?p=40759351

================================================== ================================================== ============================================

Spoiled by ad free browsing on my normal desktop computer it became increasingly annoying seeing all the ads on my phone. However it's really easy to make them disappear, although you most likely will need root on the phone.

Download the hosts.txt file from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt, you may need to run dos2unix over the file to remote \r characters, rename the file hosts and copy it to /system/etc on your phone and say goodbye to most ads.

You may find the list to be imperfect, for example some feedburner URLs are "blocked" as a result which can screw with RSS feeds, although it's annoying giving too much info to Google but like everything else in life some things are a trade off.

If you want to root your phone, try this article.

Thanks for this!

As soon as I read the topic title I realised what you were doing and I never thought of it myself.

My hosts file was /etc/hosts though, not /system/etc/hosts

Originally Posted by Dark X Dragon

As soon as I read the topic title I realised what you were doing and I never thought of it myself.

I've been using this technique for a bit, just didn't think to post about it before did a quick search and noticed no one else had so thought I might as well

My hosts file was /etc/hosts though, not /system/etc/hosts

Doesn't seem to matter, I just checked the /etc dir and it has the same hosts file.

Actually, /etc is a symbolic link to /system/etc, so your hosts file is really at /system/etc -- however, accessing the file through either path is equivalent.

Ha ha hosts exists on android!? I had no idea. I'm also a spoiled ad-less pc user. This is great. Thanks.

If you can't download the file above (it appears as text in browser), replace .txt with .zip at the end of the url. This will download the zip file which u can later unzip with an unzip app in the market.

Ok. I can't paste over the original hosts file using the phone? Astro and lynda file managers don't do it for me. And yes I am rooted, running 1.5 dudes build. Can this be done only from a PC?

Originally Posted by ShatBag1105

Ok. I can't paste over the original hosts file using the phone? Astro and lynda file managers don't do it for me. And yes I am rooted, running 1.5 dudes build. Can this be done only from a PC?

You have a couple of options, you can download the terminal app from the market and use it, or you can use ADB to shell into the phone, or wait for someone to code an app to do it all for you.

For the time being go with installing terminal, then type 'su' to become root. That is unless you have a copy of adb handy, if you can 'adb shell' the following commands are the same, except you can copy and paste.

Then remount the system partition read-write.

mount -o remount,rw /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

Then you go into the etc dir

cd /system/etc

Then you can rm the hosts file

rm hosts

Then grab the hosts.txt file

wget http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt -O hosts

Always more than one way to skin a cat, but the above works for me(tm)

Originally Posted by lbcoder

Actually, /etc is a symbolic link to /system/etc, so your hosts file is really at /system/etc -- however, accessing the file through either path is equivalent.

Ugghh, I read that ages ago but really didn't commit it to memory. It is now. =)


There's a fair chance I won't get around to it but I'm tempted to take this ad blocking further. Namely an automatic app but there might be more to add to it.

Thanks for the help delta. I figured it had to be done in terminal. And you know, this would definitely become very popular as an app.

I'm a dummy its etc not ect

Originally Posted by delta_foxtrot2

Then grab the hosts.txt file

wget http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt -O hosts

Always more than one way to skin a cat, but the above works for me(tm)

(I am using the terminal program on the phone)

Until the above step, no problems
After typing in the above I get the following message:

"bad address "www.mvps.org"

I checked for typing errors, tried it 3 times but get the same error message

Any suggestions please?

thanks