Mane

A native macOS ad blocker. Wraps Brave's adblock-rust engine in a Liquid Glass dashboard, with bundled extensions for Safari and Chrome.

VERY MUCH IN-PROD, TREAD CAREFULLY.

Why this exists

Existing Mac adblockers split into two camps. Browser extensions like uBlock Origin block ads well but run only inside the browser, with no system view. Native Mac apps like 1Blocker or AdGuard Mini are constrained by Apple's Content Blocker API (50,000 rule cap, no DOM access, no scriptlet injection) and can't beat extensions on sites that actively detect ad blockers.

Mane combines both: extensions for Safari and Chrome running the same Brave engine that powers the Brave browser, plus a native macOS dashboard that owns the rule sets, the analytics, and the configuration. One engine, three surfaces.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│       macOS Dashboard (SwiftUI)         │
│       Liquid Glass, analytics,          │
│       settings, filter management       │
└──────────────┬──────────────────────────┘
               │  native messaging
       ┌───────┴───────┐
       │               │
┌──────▼─────┐   ┌─────▼──────┐
│ Safari Web │   │   Chrome   │
│ Extension  │   │  Extension │
│ (bundled)  │   │   (MV3)    │
└──────┬─────┘   └─────┬──────┘
       │               │
       └───────┬───────┘
               │
        ┌──────▼──────┐
        │  adblock-   │  shared engine
        │    rust     │  Swift via FFI · extensions via WASM
        └─────────────┘

Requirements

• macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later
• Xcode 26 or later
• Rust toolchain (rustup)
• Node 22 or later (for the browser extensions)

Status

Alpha. Safari and Chrome both block ads end-to-end against a shared 122,026-rule declarativeNetRequest set compiled from EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Fanboy's Annoyance and Peter Lowe's list. The SwiftUI Liquid Glass dashboard owns the master toggle, stats, and filter-list metadata; both popups carry a working blocking switch with the same visual language. The Safari container app is signed and sandboxed against the Apple Developer Program team; Chrome is a standalone MV3 build (chrome-ext/). Next phase is closing the catch-rate gaps (specific tracker domains that still slip through) and adding cosmetic filtering via the WASM engine.

Build & validate

# fetch the filter lists (cached locally, not committed)
./scripts/fetch-filterlists.sh

# Rust engine — 8 cases through adblock-rust directly
cargo run --example test_blocker --release

# Swift FFI bridge — same engine called from Swift via the C ABI
./scripts/build-swift-bridge.sh
swift test --package-path engine-swift

Both runs cover the same shape of cases: known ad and tracker URLs (Google Tag Manager, DoubleClick, Google Analytics, Scorecard) get blocked, and known content URLs (BBC assets, GitHub, Wikipedia) pass through.

Repository layout

Mane/
├── Cargo.toml                  workspace root
├── engine-rs/                  Rust engine wrapper
│   ├── Cargo.toml
│   ├── build.rs                runs cbindgen to emit the C header
│   ├── cbindgen.toml
│   ├── src/lib.rs
│   ├── src/ffi.rs              C ABI for native consumers (Swift, etc.)
│   └── examples/test_blocker.rs
├── engine-swift/               Swift package wrapping the C ABI
│   ├── Package.swift
│   ├── Sources/CManeEngine/    module map + generated C header
│   ├── Sources/ManeEngine/     Swift wrapper class
│   └── Tests/ManeEngineTests/
├── engine-wasm/                Rust crate, compiled to WASM for the browser
│   ├── Cargo.toml
│   └── src/lib.rs              wasm-bindgen wrapper around adblock-rust
├── scripts/
│   ├── fetch-filterlists.sh
│   ├── build-swift-bridge.sh   builds the Rust lib, vendors the header
│   └── build-wasm-engine.sh    runs wasm-pack, drops output in safari-ext/engine/
├── filterlists/                downloaded lists, not committed
├── safari-ext/                 web extension source (MV3)
│   ├── manifest.json
│   ├── background.js           service worker, request listener, real engine
│   ├── popup/                  toolbar popup
│   ├── engine/                 compiled WASM + JS glue, not committed
│   ├── filters/                synced from filterlists/, not committed
│   └── scripts/sync-filters.sh
└── mac-app/Mane/               Xcode project
    ├── Mane.xcodeproj
    ├── Mane/                   container app target
    └── Mane Extension/         Safari Web Extension target

The Chrome extension (phase 4) will live in chrome-ext/. The SwiftUI dashboard replaces the placeholder container app inside mac-app/Mane/Mane/ in a later phase.

Licensing

Mane is MIT-licensed. See LICENSE.

The bundled engine, adblock-rust, is MPL-2.0 (Mozilla Public License 2.0) and remains under its original licence. Filter lists (EasyList, EasyPrivacy) are dual-licensed by their maintainers under GPL-3.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0.