I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Chrome for Android—mostly news and article sites but I’m constantly bombarded with ads. One shows up just under the address bar, and another large one appears at the bottom of the screen.
Sometimes they disappear on their own, other times they stick around and block content. I’ve tried clearing cache, uninstalling unused apps, and even installed an ad blocker, but it says I need to turn off Lite Mode which doesn’t even exist in my settings anymore.
I’m using an older Android phone, mostly on home Wi-Fi, and these ads are really disruptive. I try to “X” them out, but they either do nothing or just come back.
Any simple fixes or reliable workarounds that don’t require rooting the phone or changing to a completely new browser?
If blocking ads in Chrome is proving unreliable, switching to a privacy-focused browser like Brave or Firefox Focus can be a game-changer. Brave blocks ads and trackers right out of the box no extra configuration needed.
Firefox Focus is even more stripped down and optimized for minimal distraction. They’re also much lighter on older devices.
Many in the dev and QA communities prefer using these browsers on mobile to avoid noise when testing content-heavy websites. They also help reduce bandwidth usage, which is great for home Wi-Fi.
One of the most effective ways to block mobile ads without touching Chrome settings is using a DNS-based ad blocker like AdGuard DNS or NextDNS. These work across all apps by blocking ad servers at the network level. Just go into your Wi-Fi settings and change your private DNS to a provider like dns.adguard.com.
It works system-wide, so even Chrome gets ad blocking, and you don’t need to worry about browser compatibility or Chrome-specific quirks. If you’re also testing how pages behave under various content-blocking rules, AI-native cloud testing platforms like LambdaTest can help simulate clean and ad-heavy environments for testing on different devices and OS versions.
Sometimes what looks like ads are actually site-level notifications that users unknowingly allow. Go to Chrome > Settings > Site Settings > Notifications and revoke permission from any site that looks sketchy. Also, turn off Pop-ups and redirects under Site Settings.
This won’t block banner ads, but it does stop a lot of the aggressive auto-playing or floating pop-ups that seem to reload themselves.
From a testing point of view, if you’re building or validating user flows in environments with third-party scripts (like news websites), it’s worth using LambdaTest to see how different ad types affect layout stability or CTA visibility across devices.