StopTheMadness for iOS Support

Support Home: StopTheMadness Support

Help Topics:

• How to Enable the Safari Extension
• iOS 16 and iPadOS 16
• Privacy
• Why is the icon blue in Safari?
• Website Options
• How to Add Website Options
• Custom Elements
• Redirects
• Migrate Safari Extension Settings to a New Device
• Known Website Compatibility Issues

iOS 16 and iPadOS 16:
The current App Store version of StopTheMadness is compatible with iOS 16 and iPadOS 16. There are no known issues. Please email support if you discover an issue.

Privacy:
According to Safari, "This extension can read and alter webpages you visit and see your browsing history on all websites. This includes sensitives information from webpages, including passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards." However, this is just boilerplate text from Apple shown for every Safari extension that can modify webpages. StopTheMadness does not read, use, or share your personal data. The privacy policy has more details about StopTheMadness privacy. See also my blog post The security of Safari extensions for a more detailed explanation of StopTheMadness permissions.

Why is the icon blue in Safari?
Safari automatically highlights most extension icons with a blue tint when the extension is active on the current web page. The StopTheMadness icon was originally designed to avoid this distracting blue tint, because StopTheMadness is active on every web page. However, Apple changed Safari in iOS and iPadOS version 15.1 so that StopTheMadness could no longer avoid the blue tint. You can read more about this change in my blog post.

Website Options:
You can selectively enable and disable StopTheMadness features. Your custom options can be configured to apply to every web page or just to web sites that you specify. To change the options, open the StopTheMadness popup from Safari's address bar.

There are a number of protection features that you can enable and disable. By default, the "Recommended" features are enabled. These provide you with a high level of protection while also maximizing website compatibility. The features labeled "Use with caution" provide even higher levels of protection, but there may be more sites that don't work right when they're enabled, which is why they're disabled by default. The features labeled "Keyboard-related" are intended to be used only on an iPad with an external hardware keyboard attached. Any and all of the features can be enabled or disabled as necessary or desired. Below is an explanation of each feature.

Recommended:

• Bypass AMP: When enabled, StopTheMadness detects Google AMP and automatically loads the "canonical" non-AMP link instead. By default, Bypass AMP still allows the "AMP viewer" frame in a page, for example on Google Images Search (www.google.com) and Google News (news.google.com), because many people like to browse quickly through lists of images or articles. If you prefer to bypass both AMP links and the AMP viewer, switch from "links" to "links and viewer" in the popup menu.
• Bypass link shorteners: When enabled, StopTheMadness automatically checks the links you click for known link shorteners — bit.ly, tinyurl.com, t.co (Twitter), news.google.com, l.facebook.com, etc. — and replaces the shortened URL with the unshortened destination URL. This occurs in a sandboxed process, without setting any cookies or other site data in Safari, so you can't be tracked by your click.
  The Link shorteners feature also loads clicked Apple News links in Safari instead of the News app.
• Hide some app banners: When enabled, popup banners prompting you to get the App Store app are automatically hidden on Google, DuckDuckGo, IMDb, Instagram, Reddit, and Tumblr. Smart app banners that appear at the top of web pages are also hidden. This feature is enabled by default.
• Input maxlength warning: When enabled, StopTheMadness warns you if the characters you type or paste into a password field or other input field exceed the maximum length of the field. If this feature is disabled, then some of the characters you type or paste into a password field can get silently lost, with no warning.
• Protect autocomplete: When enabled, autocompletion and AutoFill of user names, passwords, and other information always works in web forms. When disabled, websites can prevent AutoFill.
• Protect contextual menus: When enabled, you can always open Safari's contextual menu. When disabled, websites can prevent you from opening the contextual menu or substitute their own menu for Safari's.
• Protect copy, cut, and paste: When enabled, you can always copy, cut, and paste text on a web page. When disabled, websites can prevent you from doing copy, cut, and paste.
• Protect drag and drop: When enabled, you can always drag and drop on a web page. When disabled, websites can prevent you from doing drag and drop.
• Protect tab closing and page visibility: When enabled, you can always immediately close a tab. When disabled, websites can stop you from closing a tab or window. Instead, Safari may show a popup alert that asks "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" when you try to close a tab or a window.
  The Tab closing and visibility feature also prevents websites from observing visibilitychange events, which are part of the Page Visibility API. Using this API, websites can learn when a tab is visible on your screen and when the tab is hidden. When Tab closing and visibility is enabled, websites can't observe when you show or hide a tab or your screen.
• Protect text selection: When enabled, you can always select text on a web page. When disabled, websites can prevent you from selecting text.
• Stop link trackers: When enabled, your privacy is protected on the web in a a number of ways:
  1. Stops hyperlink auditing by removing the anchor "ping" attribute on link clicks.
  2. Stops tracking beacons (Navigator.sendBeacon) from firing.
  3. Prevents hijacking/rewriting of clicked links in Google Search results.
  4. Prevents hijacking/rewriting of clicked links in Gmail.
  5. Prevents hijacking/rewriting of clicked links in Facebook.
  6. Removes tracking tags such as utm_source (Urchin Tracking Module), gclid (Google Click ID), and fbclid (Facebook Click ID) from the end of the URL when you click, drag, or open a contextual menu on a link.

Use with caution:

• Bring images to the front: When enabled, all images on the page are forced to the front. This can help on websites such as Instagram that put a transparent overlay in front of images, which prevents you from dragging or opening the contextual menu for an image. Images in front is disabled by default, because it can mess up the page layout on some sites.
• Force external links into current tab: Websites frequently add target="_blank" to a link to make the link automatically open in a new tab when you click. If you prefer to open links in the current tab instead of a new tab, you can enable this feature, which removes target="_blank" from links. When enabled, normal link clicks always open in the current tab. When this feature is disabled, some links may automatically open in new tabs when clicked.
• Force external links into new tab: When enabled, cross-site links (links with a different domain than the current website) will always open in a new tab. This can be useful for reading Google News, for example, especially with the "Bypass AMP" and "Bypass link shorteners" website options. When this feature is disabled, cross-site links may open in the same Safari tab.
• Protect pointer movement: When enabled, websites cannot use JavaScript to track the movement of your finger on the web page. You may want to enable this feature to protect your privacy. When this feature is disabled, websites can use JavaScript to track the movement of your finger.
• Protect scrolling: When enabled, websites cannot prevent or hijack scrolling. Websites often use "scrolljacking" for annoying purposes, such as popup videos on scroll. When the scrolling option is disabled, websites can scrolljack. This feature is disabled by default, because it causes incompatibilities with a number of websites, especially sites with "infinite scrolling". See Known Issues for a few examples.
• Protect textareas: When enabled, multi-line text editors (HTML textarea elements) are also protected by the website options "Protect ⌘-key shortcuts", "Protect copy, cut, and paste", and "Protect text selection". By default, only single-line editors (HTML input elements) are protected, because multi-line editors don't usually prevent copy and paste, and a lot of websites have special multi-line "rich text" editors with highly customized editing that can break with the textarea feature enabled. However, you may need to enable this feature on certain websites if they disable copy and paste.
• Protect zooming: When enabled, StopTheMadness allows you to zoom in and out on the web page, with the pinch gesture or with Safari's toolbar controls. When disabled, websites (for example, Old Reddit) can prevent you from zooming on the page. This feature is disabled by default.
• Show native video controls: When enabled, video controls are shown by default, and you can always click on a video to control it or show the contextual menu for videos. When disabled, websites can cover videos with a transparent overlay that prevents you from directly controlling the video. This feature is disabled by default, because a lot of websites have custom video controls and don't use the HTML5 default controls.
• Stop autoplaying videos: When enabled, videos are prevented from autoplaying. This happens regardless of Safari's Auto-Play Preferences, and it works even on sites where Safari's Auto-Play Preferences don't work, such as YouTube. When disabled, websites can autoplay videos without any user interaction. This feature is disabled by default.
• Stop all audio and video: When enabled, no audio or video is ever allowed to play on the page, not even if you press the play button. Usually this feature isn't necessary, because "Stop autoplaying videos" works well in most cases. However, if you're playing audio in a background app such as Music, some websites in Safari can still interrupt and pause your background audio. "Stop all audio and video" can help in these cases. (Note that enabling "Stop audio and video" takes effect immediately, but if you switch it from on to off, you need to reload the current web page to allow media again.) This feature is disabled by default.

Keyboard-related:

• Hover shortcuts: When enabled, you can delete any HTML element on the page by hovering over it and pressing the ⌘-delete keyboard shortcut. There's a confirmation dialog, which you can skip with the option key: ⌥⌘-delete.
• Protect ⌘-click: When enabled, ⌘-click always opens links in a new tab. When disabled, websites can prevent you from opening links in a new tab.
• Protect ⌘-key shortcuts: When enabled, ⌘-key shortcuts always go to Safari. When disabled, websites can hijack or disable keyboard shortcuts.
• Stop ⌘-arrow page navigation: Inside an editable text field, ⌘-left-arrow and ⌘-right-arrow put the cursor at the beginning or end of the current line of text. However, outside an editable text field, ⌘-left-arrow makes you navigate back to the previous page in your web browsing history, and ⌘-right-arrow makes you navigate forward. This page navigation is often accidental and unwanted! Stop ⌘-arrow page navigation prevents these keyboard shortcuts from causing page history navigation, while still allowing you to use the keyboard shortcuts in editable text fields. This feature is disabled by default. Enable it to prevent unwanted history navigation.

Custom <style> element and Custom <script> element:
If you enter text into this area, StopTheMadness will create a custom HTML <style> or <script> element on the web page. The text you enter will become the element's inline CSS or JavaScript. If the text area is empty, then no custom element is created on the web page. StopTheMadness doesn't check your syntax, so you'll probably want to copy the CSS and JS from elsewhere and paste it into StopTheMadness. If you have a CSS or JS file open in the active Safari tab, then StopTheMadness will automatically insert the file's text when you tap inside the empty "Custom <style> element" or "Custom <script> element" area; this makes it easy to import files from userscript sites such as Greasy Fork. (The custom <script> element is created after the DOMContentLoaded event.)

When you change the website options in StopTheMadness, those changes apply immediately to the active Safari tab, and will apply to all web pages loaded thereafter in any tab. If you already had a web page open in a background tab before you changed the website options, and you want the changes to apply immediately to that web page, you need to switch to the tab and reload the page.

Redirects:
StopTheMadness can automatically redirect URLs so that when you open a link to one web site, your web browser loads a different site of your choosing. For example, you can redirect new Reddit to old Reddit if you prefer the old user interface. Or you can use privacy-preserving alternatives to popular web sites such as Nitter for Twitter and Invidious for YouTube.

StopTheMadness uses the JavaScript function String.replace() to redirect URLs. To create a redirect, you need a URL matching pattern and a replacement for that pattern. The matching pattern can be either a substring of the URL or a regex expression enclosed in "/" characters. The replacement is always a substring, though there are some special characters you can use in the replacement, as explained by the String.replace() documentation. Examples:

URL matching pattern	Replacement
https://www.reddit.com/	https://old.reddit.com/
https://youtube.com/	https://invidious-us.kavin.rocks/
https://twitter.com/	https://nitter.net/
https://mobile.twitter.com/	https://nitter.net/
/^https?://(mobile\.)?twitter.com//	https://nitter.net/
/^mailto:/	https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&to=
/^http:/	https:

The redirect rules are matched in the order they appear in StopTheMadness, though the order usually shouldn't matter if the rules are for different domains. If needed, you can use the up arrow buttons to change the order. You can also use the checkboxes to temporarily disable a rule.

How to Add Website Options:
The Default options for all websites apply to every web page in Safari, unless you have custom options for a particular site. To create custom options for a website, type the website into the URL-specific options field and then press the New button to disable all of the new options or the Duplicate button to duplicate all of the options from the currently selected website. (The Done button closes the keyboard without adding anything.) The New button is useful if you're experiencing a website compatibility issue with StopTheMadness and just want to disable everything.

There are two ways to specify websites: domain or URL. Examples of domains are "apple.com" and "google.com". If you specify a domain, then subdomains of that domain are automatically covered too. For example, "google.com" also covers "www.google.com", "mail.google.com", etc. If you want a subdomain to have different options than its domain, create a separate item for the subdomain. The longest match always wins, so if you have items for both "google.com" and "mail.google.com", then your "mail.google.com" options will apply when you load the page "https://mail.google.com/". If you want options to apply only to subdomains but not to the domain, put a dot at the beginning: ".google.com" applies to "https://www.google.com/", etc., but not to "https://google.com/".

You may want to apply custom options only to certain paths of a website, in which case you need to specify the website as a full URL. For example, if you enter "https://www.google.com/maps", then the custom options will only apply to Google Maps and not to Google Search at "https://www.google.com/". Subpaths are automatically covered too: "https://www.google.com/maps" would also cover "https://www.google.com/maps/search/apple+park". You can customize subpath options by creating a separate item for the subpath. As with domains, the longest match among URLs always wins. And a URL setting that includes a domain will override a domain setting for the same domain, since the URL is longer. So "https://www.google.com/maps" takes precedence over "www.google.com".

Migrate Safari Extension Settings to a New Device:
StopTheMadness for both iOS and macOS supports export and import of your custom Safari extension settings with iCloud.

Known Website Compatibility Issues:
In these cases you may want to create custom website options and disable the specific feature.

• Protect scrolling: apple.com, icloud.com, cnn.com, netflix.com, smartsheet.com, twitter.com

• Show native video controls: hulu.com, netflix.com, nfl.com

• Stop autoplaying videos: espn.com

Support Home: StopTheMadness Support