There are TONS of ad-blockers, and a very sophisticated and comprehensive ad blocking API available on iOS. What’s stopping one single ad blocker from running on it?

These tons of ad blockers do a very poor job actually blocking ads in Safari, unfortunately. I run AdGuard and any time I’m out of my PiHole’s range it’s all a crapfest of ads.

I’ve used 1Blocker without issue for a years. I use uBlock Origin on my desktop, but I can’t say I remember seeing ads on my mobile with 1Blocker.

I use 1blocker and virtually never see an ad..

Similar here. Have 1Blocker, Better, Purify, and the Firefox Focus Safari extension and between those I rarely see ads. Compared to Firefox with uBlock Origin on my Windows machines I’d say the experience is about 98-99% as good.

nextdns works real well for me.

any recommendation for an adblocker on ios that can block youtube ads?

"Vinegar - Tube Cleaner" blocks all YouTube ads in Safari.

It also replaces YouTube's video player with the native HTML5 player, so you can play videos in the background or watch them in picture-in-picture mode.

Vinegar can also be used together with Sponsorblock for a completely ad-free experience. It's a difference as night and day.

Thank you for this recommendation - I'm planning to switch platforms in a few weeks, and blocking YT ads was one of the big open questions I still had.

I’m using Musi (which is designed to stream songs off youtube). Behind the scenes, it likely uses mechanisms akin to popular youtube downloaders, and is finicky where age-restricted videos are concerned.

But with it, I’ve yet to see a single ad and it can play audio from youtube in the background.

It can find and play playlists but has a poor story of following channels. You cannot navigate to a channel with it and binge on videos from it.

1Blocker or magic lasso seem to do the trick for me

Wipr works most of the time for me.