BowerBird clears cookie walls, newsletter popups, sticky headers and chat bubbles off the pages you read, and blocks ads and trackers while it is there.
BowerBird installs without requesting access to any website. declarativeNetRequest block and allow rules are applied by the browser itself and need no host permissions. Host access is requested per-origin, on demand, only when you hide your first element on that site.
Hide your first annoyance free - no account, no subscription.
Not on Chrome and Opera yet.
BowerBird installs without requesting access to any website.
Declutter scans the visible page and proposes what to hide. You approve each item.
Cookie walls, newsletter modals, sticky headers, chat bubbles and app-install nags.
$12 once. No subscription, ever. No paid allowlist, ever.
Declutter analyses the page on your machine.
Every major blocker asks for permission to read and change your data on all websites, at install, before it has done anything for you.
BowerBird installs with access to nothing. Blocking runs on rules the browser applies itself, which needs no site access at all. It asks for one site only when you hide your first element there, and you can take it back.
This is an architectural limit, not a policy choice, and it costs features: BowerBird cannot rewrite headers or redirect requests. We think the trade is worth it.
Pointing at every annoyance yourself is the tedious part. Most people give up after two.
BowerBird scans what is actually visible on the page, proposes the clutter it finds, and you approve or reject each item before anything is hidden.
Nothing is hidden without your approval. The scan runs entirely on your machine using built-in rules - fixed overlays, z-index outliers, elements injected after load, dialog roles and text signals. It labels what it finds descriptively rather than guessing at intent.
Browser devtools can delete an element, but it comes straight back on refresh.
BowerBird writes a stable CSS rule instead of deleting a node, so the element stays gone on the next visit and the one after that. Unlimited rules, free.
Where a page offers no stable handle, the rule falls back to a positional selector that can break after a redesign. BowerBird tells you at the moment you create it, and marks those rules in Settings.
You dismiss the same consent wall on the same site every week, because the choice is stored in a cookie you keep clearing.
Shipped lists hide the common ones automatically. For anything they miss, point at it once and it stays gone on that site.
Hiding a consent wall is not the same as consenting or refusing. Where a site gates content behind the wall, hiding it will not unlock the content.
A site breaks, and your only options are leaving the blocker on or turning it off everywhere.
Blocking, Paused here, or Off, per site, from the popup. Paused stops blocking requests but keeps the elements you hid hidden. Off does nothing at all on that site.
Paused sites are remembered up to 2,000 of them, which is as many as Chrome lets an extension store.
Ads and analytics load before the page does, and most blockers want access to every site you visit in exchange for stopping them.
25,499 rules across five lists on by default, compiled from EasyList and EasyPrivacy at build time. Five more optional lists, including four regional ones.
We do not out-block uBlock Origin Lite and do not claim to. Chrome's MV3 rule budget is 30,000, and roughly 87,000 filters were dropped to stay inside it. If maximum blocking coverage is what you want, use uBOL - BowerBird runs happily alongside it.
Some blockers hide the banner a moment too late, so you watch it appear and then vanish. It reads as a bug.
Hiding rules are registered to apply before the browser parses the page, and the on-page bundle is kept deliberately tiny so it runs early.
Measured on five real sites at four times CPU throttling, the rules landed before first paint in every sample. On a first visit to a site that redirects to a different subdomain, one flash is still possible.
Hide enough things and you lose track of what you hid, and why a page looks odd months later.
Settings lists every rule grouped by site, with its selector, label and where it came from. Turn one off, delete it, or clear a whole site.
Rules built on a positional selector are marked, because those are the ones most likely to need repair after a redesign.
You set a machine up the way you like it and then get a new one.
Export every rule as a plain JSON file and import it anywhere. Import adds to what you have; it never replaces it.
Rules are keyed by site, so importing rules for sites you do not visit costs nothing but does nothing.
If you want the most blocking, install uBlock Origin Lite. If you want the page arranged, install BowerBird. Neither conflicts with the other, and both install without asking to read every site you visit.
Blocking coverage, plainly. uBOL is written by the person who invented the filtering approach the rest of the industry copies, it is free, and it is open source. It fits far more filters inside the same MV3 budget than we do.
| uBlock Origin Lite | BowerBird | |
|---|---|---|
| Ad and tracker blocking coverage | Best in class | 25,499 rules, same list sources |
| Filters dropped for the MV3 budget | Far fewer | About 87,000, and we say so |
| Site access requested at install | None | None |
| Point-and-click element hiding | Yes | Yes, with a scope ladder |
| Finds the clutter for you | No | Yes (Pro) |
| Price | Free | Free, Pro is $12 one-time |
ad and tracker blocking, the element picker with unlimited rules, and the shipped annoyance lists
one-click Declutter, rule profiles, batch apply across a domain, export and import, and the repair console
One-time purchase via Lemon Squeezy. Delivered instantly as a license key. No subscription. No paid allowlist. No upsell interstitials.
One payment. The key arrives by email and on the confirmation screen.