AdGuard Host Lists Registry

• What Blocklists Can Be Added Here
• Where Blocklists Are Published
• Filters Metadata
• Services Metadata
• Safe Search Filters
• How to Build
• Localizations

This repository contains the known hosts blocklists that are made available to the users of AdGuard products (AdGuard DNS, AdGuard Home, etc).

Some of these blocklists are automatically converted to the rules format that AdGuard product understand better.

Where Blocklists Are Published

• filters.json contains all the blocklists added to the repo. downloadURL is the location of the re-hosted blocklist.
• services.json is the meta-data of "Web Services". This is a part of the parental control functionality of AdGuard Home and AdGuard DNS.

What Blocklists Can Be Added Here

• The blocklist should be oriented towards DNS-level content blockers. There is a different repo for browser content blockers.

• We prefer (mostly) original lists to compilations.

• We prefer blocklists that are specifically made for AdGuard Home and use adblock-style syntax. Lists that use /etc/hosts can also be added if there is no alternative.

• The blocklist should have a clear purpose.

  Examples:

  • good: "blocks TV ads".
  • bad: "John Doe's personal blocklist"

• The blocklist should have a place for receiving user complaints and holding discussions, such as a repository on github.com, or a public website/forum.

• The blocklist should be relatively popular, meaning:

  • if there is a repository on GitHub, the number of stars should be at least 50.
  • if there is no repository on GitHub, the number of reported issues and discussions should be at least 10 per month.
  • the blocklist should be actively supported for at least 6 months.

• The blocklist should be regularly updated with at least 10 updates per month.

• Previously added blocklists that haven't received any support for a year will be removed. We reserve the right to remove the blocklist earlier, depending on circumstances.

• If the blocklist contains too many problematic rules, it will not be added. A rule is considered problematic if it causes false positives or otherwise displays unitended behavior. Decisions about blocklists with problematic rules are arbitrary and there may be exceptions.

• If the blocklist intentionally blocks or restricts access to a service for no reason other than being a reflection of the filter author's opinion, the blocklist will not get added, or will get removed if already added.

• If the blocklist is popular in a specific region and there are no alternatives to it, then it can be added as is even if it does not satisfy requirements above.

How to add a filter list

To add a new filter, you need to:

1. Go to the filters folder.
2. Go to the category to which the new filter will belong.
3. Create a new folder with the name filter_(id)_(filter name).
4. Create two files in this folder: configuration.json and metadata.json. The contents of these files are described below.
5. In the file locales/en/filters.json add an object with the name and description of the filter according to the example added above.

The files /assets/filters.json and /assets/filters-dev.json must not be edited manually.

Filters Metadata

• metadata.json

  Filter metadata. Includes name, description, etc.

  • filterKey — unique human-readable filter identifier (string)
  • filterId - unique internal filter identifier (integer)
  • name — filter name; can be localized
  • description — filter description
  • timeAdded — time when this filter was added to the registry; milliseconds since January 1, 1970; you can exec new Date().getTime() in the browser console to get the current time
  • homepage — filter website/homepage
  • expires — filter's default expiration period
  • displayNumber — this number is used when AdGuard sorts available filters (GUI)
  • environment - either dev or prod. Only prod lists are available in AdGuard DNS.
  • disabled - if set to true, the blocklist won't be updated.
  • tags — a list of tags
  Metadata example

  ```json { "filterKey": "adguard_dns_filter", "filterId": 1, "name": "AdGuard DNS filter", "description": "Filter composed of several other filters (AdGuard Base filter, Social Media filter, Tracking Protection filter, Mobile Ads filter, EasyList and EasyPrivacy) and simplified specifically to be better compatible with DNS-level ad blocking.", "timeAdded": 1404115015843, "homepage": "https://kb.adguard.com/general/adguard-ad-filters", "expires": "4 days", "displayNumber": 3, "environment": "prod", "tags": [] } ```

• revision.json

  Filter version metadata, automatically filled and overwritten on each build.

• filter.txt

  Resulting compiled filter.

• configuration.json

  Configuration defines your filter list sources, and the transformations that are applied to the sources. See Hostlist compiler configuration for details

Tags

Every filter can be marked by a number of tags. Every tag metadata listed in /tags/metadata.json.

Possible tags:

• lang:* — for language-specific filters; one or multiple lang-tags can be used. For instance, AdGuard Russian filter is marked with the lang:ru tag.

• purpose:* — determines filters purposes; multiple purpose-tags can be used for one filter list.

• recommended — for low-risk filter lists which are recommended to use in their category. The category is determined by the pair of the lang:* and purpose:* tags.

• obsolete — for abandoned filter lists; filter's metadata with this tag will be excluded from filters.json and filters_i18n.json.

How to add a blockable service

To add a new blocked service, a new .yml file must be added to the services directory, the contents of the directory and the resulting services.json file are described in the next section.

Services Metadata

The services.json file combines information about services received from separate .yml files located in the services directory. The services.json file is generated by a script, so there is no need to modify it manually.

• Source .yml files: Each .yml file contains information about a specific service. The file name must match its id.

• File saving: .yml files are stored in the services directory.

• Updating information: In cases when it is necessary to change the configuration of a service, it is necessary to update the corresponding .yml file in the services directory.

• Adding a new service: to add a new service to services.json it is necessary to add .yml file to the services directory, after the script is run the file will be updated.

WARNING!

• Deletion of files is strictly forbidden. If a service file is deleted, the script will restore it from a previous version of the services.json file.

• It is also forbidden to change service id inside the .yml file.

Service metadata includes id, name, rules, icon_svg:

• id — unique human-readable service identifier (string, as snake_case)
• name — service name (string)
• rules — list of domain rules in Adblock syntax (list of strings)
• icon_svg — svg icon (string)

SVG icon requirements:

• The icon must have a square shape, i.e. the third and fourth parameters of the viewBox attribute must be equal.
• The icon must be black and white.
• It should be as small as possible.
• Svg tag must contain fill="currentColor" attribute. This is important for themes to work properly.
• Svg tag must not contain width and height attributes

Safe Search Filters

• engines_safe_search.txt contains a set of rules to enforce Safe Search in the following searching engines:

  • Bing
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Google
  • Pixabay
  • Yandex

• youtube_safe_search.txt contains a set of rules to enforce Safe Search and hide comments on YouTube.

How to Build

yarn install

Run the following command:

yarn run compose

The build result can be found in the assets directory.

Localizations

Blocklist names, descriptions, and tags' names are translated via crowdin.

/locales contains translations for filters, groups, and tags.

Base language strings:

• locales/en/filters.json
• locales/en/tags.json

In order to prepare these files run yarn run locales:prepare. This script will scan filters meta and add filters names, descriptions, and tags meta to the base language files.

• Upload base language strings: yarn run locales:upload
• Download translations: yarn run locales:download