What Blue Guard does

Six things, and how each one works. A privacy claim you cannot check is only a claim, so every card here explains the mechanism behind it.

Ads never finish loading

Blue Guard stops ads, trackers and cookie banners before a single byte arrives.

Blocking, done properly

Safari does the work.

Blue Guard hands Safari a rule list and steps back. Safari matches those rules itself and refuses the matching requests before a single byte arrives. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why Blue Guard never sees a page you visit: it is not in the room when you browse.

What you get back.

Adverts and tracking scripts stopped before they download means less to load, less mobile data spent on things you did not ask for, and a page that reads like a page rather than a jumble sale.

Cookie banners.

Blocked where a consent platform serves them, and hidden where a site serves its own. This one is off until you turn it on, because a site that insists on an answer may decide to show you nothing at all instead.

Blocking beyond Safari

Tracker domains are refused in every app, not just the browser.

App-wide blocking

It filters domain lookups.

Before any app can reach a server it has to look up that address. Blue Guard checks each lookup against the same list Safari uses, answers the blocked ones on the device, and passes everything else straight through.

iOS calls it a VPN.

A packet tunnel is the only way Apple lets an app see system-wide DNS, and iOS badges every packet tunnel as a VPN. No traffic is routed anywhere, no address is hidden, and the tunnel begins and ends on your own device.

What it cannot do.

Filtering works per domain, so a company serving its analytics from the same domain as its content stays allowed. An app with a hardcoded address, or its own resolver, skips the lookup entirely.

There is nothing to collect

No account. No analytics. No servers.

Nothing to collect

A shape, not a promise.

Most privacy claims are a policy asking you to take somebody at their word. This one is a fact about how the app is built: Blue Guard has no sign-in, no analytics code and no systemBlue server to call, because systemBlue runs none. There is no route by which your data could reach systemBlue.

What stays on your iPhone.

Your allowlist, your custom rules, your settings, and the rule lists themselves. All of it lives in the app’s own storage, none of it is uploaded, and deleting the app takes the lot with it.

Read the detail.

The privacy policy lists every item the app stores and every connection it makes, including the one feature that is built in but not yet switchable on.

Allow a site, one at a time

Add a site to the allowlist and Blue Guard stands down for that site alone.

The allowlist

An off switch with a scalpel.

Some sites break when their scripts are blocked. Some you would simply rather support. Type the address once and Blue Guard leaves that site alone from then on, without touching a thing anywhere else.

Why it is per site.

Most blockers make this an all-or-nothing decision, so one awkward site means turning blocking off everywhere. Keeping the exception to a single site means you never trade the whole thing for one page that will not load.

Write your own rules

Filter rules in the syntax you already know, checked as you add them.

Custom rules

The syntax you already know.

Blue Guard takes filter rules a line at a time, in the syntax the common blocklists use, and translates each one into the native format Safari understands. Nothing new to learn, and nothing dumbed down.

Checked before it is kept.

Every rule is validated the moment you add it. A rule Safari could not act on is handed straight back with the reason, rather than accepted and quietly ignored. One line, up to 512 characters.

Yours alone.

Your rules stay on your device. Nothing you write is shared, synced, or read by systemBlue.

Nothing to configure

The rules ship inside the app and refresh with every update.

Switch it on and forget it

One trip to Settings.

Blue Guard arrives switched off, because iOS insists that you be the one to turn a content blocker on. Enable it once in the Settings app and that is the end of your involvement.

The rules come with it.

They are written and maintained by systemBlue, compiled into the app, and refreshed each time it updates. There is no list to subscribe to and no third party to trust.