possible ways ways to stop pop-up ads in your Android

Pop-up ads are the most intrusive kind of adverts. Annoying on a desktop PC or laptop, potentially ruinously expensive on a mobile device. Downloading heavy web-pages takes enough data: you don't need the additional cost of paying to load up an ad man's marketing message.

Fortunately for Android users, there is no reason to suffer from pop-ups on your mobile. And here we suggest three straightforward ways to stop pop-ups appearing on your Android phone. These tips will all work for Android tablets, too.

We suggest you tackle each of these in order. We suspect that simply enabling the pop-up blocker on your chosen browser will make things work better. But if you need to you can take a real belt-and-braces approach, and block ads at the poxy server level.

Mehtod 1:

This is pretty straightforward. Open up the browser. Click the three dots menu icon you can see in the top righthand corner. Choose 'Settings' from the list.

Now select 'Advanced' from the menu that appears.

Ensure that 'Block pop-ups' is enabled. You shouldn't ever see a pop-up ad on your Android smartphone when you use the Android browser.

Method 2:

You can achieve a similar result with the Chrome browser. Open up Chrome, and then hit the three dots menu icon in the top righthand corner. Scroll down to 'Settings' and select it.

Scroll down to, and select, 'Site Settings', and then 'Pop-ups'. Click that option. By default pop-ups will be blocked and the option will read 'Pop-ups Block (recommended)'. But if pop-ups are allowed, move the slider to change this option.

Method 3:

Actually using Chrome - with pop-ups blocked - rather than the Android browser will in and of itself help to block some data-hogging advertising nasties. And we would recommend that everyone enable the Data Saver option. Data Saver compresses aspects of web pages that aren't required on mobile devices. It offers a smoother web browsing experience, and savings on your data bill as your phone no longer struggles to pull down unneccessary ads and animations. It can lead to a somewhat flatter browsing experience, and it is possible that some web pages will look wonky. But you can always disable Data Saver. It is a two-second job.

Open up Chrome, and then hit the three dots menu icon in the top righthand corner. Scroll down to 'Settings' and select it.

Under Settings, scroll down and select 'Data Saver'. Push the slider in the top righthand corner from 'Off' to 'On'. To disable Data Saver at any time, you simply need to reverse this action.

Methods 4:

Adblock offers its own browser for Android users. You can download the Adblock Browser free from Google Play, and with it you should never see another pop-up ad.

If after both blocking pop-ups on the Android browser, and enabling Data Saver on Chrome, you are still being troubled by pop-up ads on your Android, there is another step you can take.

If you have a rooted Android, you can simply install one of a number of ad blockers. We recommend you install Ad-block Plus from here.

Most people's Androids aren't rooted, however, so things are a little more tricky. Certainly not impossible, but more involved. And you will have to do the following for all of the Wi-Fi networks you use regularly.

You still need to install Ad-block Plus. To do so, you will first need to go to Settings, Security, and enable 'Unknown sources'.

Now use Chrome to browse to the Ad-block Plus download link, and download Ad-block Plus. Once it is downloaded, head to File Manager, find the download and click it to install.

Unfortunately, on a non-rooted handset Ad-block Plus cannot configure your network settings, so you have to do this manually. First, open up Ad-block Plus and click 'Configure' in the top righthand corner. Take a note of the proxy configuration displayed. Then from your home screen go to Settings, and then Wi-Fi. Long press the network to which you are connected, and select 'Modify network'.

Enable 'Show advanced options'.
Go to 'Proxy settings', and change the drop-down from 'None' to 'Manual'.
Now input the settings Ad-block Plus gave you. In our case the Proxy was given as 'localhost' and the Port '2020'. You will now see no ads on websites you browse from that network.