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Leechblock is a tool that allows to block distracting sites. Unfortunately it is not available for Android.

I am looking for any tool for Android - it may be a special browser, it may be a browser + extension combination, it may be paid software, it may be free software with ads.

Requirements:

  • available without rooting phone (with rooted phone it is trivial to edit /etc/hosts/)
  • makes possible to block list of domains, making them unavailable for browsing
  • it is possible to browse other websites (so ColdTurkey/uninstall browser etc are not a solutions)
  • strongly preferable, required for paid tool: list of domains may be copied to tool/loaded from file
  • in case of a paid tool - it has clearly positive reviews and is without any ads
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3 Answers 3

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+100

There is NoRoot Firewall that can block outgoing connections not just for a browser but for all programs. It can block connections either by hostname or by IP. Ability to block a particular port or range of ports or all of them. You may create your own rules for all applications (including system) who is allowed to go out and who is not. There're also preferences that allow you to set rules depending on type of network connections - allow/block when connections is over WiFI or mobile network.

NoRoot Firewall uses an OS feature called VPNService in order to modify routing table. It doesn't create real VPN connection to a server even through it seems so. So basically it act as a local proxy server.

It will require some of your time to setup rules for all applications but you will see a difference on battery life and absents of annoying ads. If you don't want to spend time setting to set blocking/allowing rules, you may train firewall on demand (You will be notified when outgoing connections trying to establish connections). You should be careful when blocking some system processes (IMS/WiFI calling and etc) otherwise many cloud base solutions would stop working.

NORoot Firewall

There is another alternative firewall that doesn't require rooting, it is NetGuard. It is open sourced solution but it has limited feature in free version to compare to NoRoot Firewall such as - new application notifications, logging of all outgoing traffic, allowing/blocking individual addresses per app. It actively developed and has potential.

Technology behind it is the same as with NoRoot - it create local VPN on localhost (which is means no any external services that doing filtering, but locally on the phone)

NetGuard

Scores on google play as of today (February 2017):

  • NoRoot Firewall - 4.4 with 1,000,000-5,000,000 installations
  • NetGuard - 4.2 with 100,000 - 500,000 installations

Both firewalls are able to work on Android 4.0 and up

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  • Thanks! It is not perfectly matching what I want (I will be unable to just import my text file of distracting domains, I will need to find IPs and hope that they will not change/add/rotate new IPs) - but on the other hand it solves problems that I was unaware of.
    – reducing activity
    Commented Feb 4, 2017 at 12:51
  • But if nothing better appears then I will accept it and award bounty.
    – reducing activity
    Commented Feb 4, 2017 at 12:52
  • Beware: NoRoot is able to do it without rooting is because it creates a VPN to their service so be aware of the implications there. It also does not support LTE yet because lack of IPv6 support. Looks to be not updated since 2014. See here for a review: google.com/amp/lifehacker.com/…
    – ARau
    Commented Feb 4, 2017 at 16:34
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    @blownie55 you are wrong about NORoot Firewall. It create VPN to itself, to the localhost (which is means it's on you own devices) that's why it don't need rooting. It doesn't use external VPN services. Second, I never have a problem neither with 4G or LTE and in major cities I easily get 24Mbps even when NoRoot FW is working. Either the article was written by a guy who barely understand IT stuff (and I believe it is a case, because I see he is master of none if he wrote articles about IT and next day about fitness) or apps was updated after his review. Did you tried it ?
    – Alex
    Commented Feb 4, 2017 at 20:30
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    @MateuszKonieczny I would love to see such feature too (shutdown app by password), but it is what it is right now
    – Alex
    Commented Feb 9, 2017 at 9:42
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There is Mobiwal: NoRoot firewall which also looks very familiar to NoRoot Firewall mentioned in another answer. Looks like both of the solutions work by creating a VPN connection but don't route the connection anywhere external according to the FAQ. Apart from the import domain names from file, this app has all the features you are looking for. It has decent reviews.

This application was last updated Feb 2015 so may have issues with latest version of Android.

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  • Scores:: NoRoot Firewall: 4.4 (with 1-5M installations) versus Mobiwal: 4.1(with 0.5-1M installs). I tried this one too, but I found some apps bypassing it when I test it in a lab behind FreeBSD firewall by capturing traffic with tcpdump, so I will stay with NoRoot (By the way NoRoot runs nicely on the latest Marshmallow and on old IceCream ).
    – Alex
    Commented Feb 4, 2017 at 20:46
  • Seems to be very similar, NoRoot works (so far) well and shares the same problem (necessity of manual blocking of IPs instead of domains like in /etc/hosts file). There are also some claims in reviews that it is not capable of blocking all apps.
    – reducing activity
    Commented Feb 5, 2017 at 5:09
  • Yes, apps that use UDP connections, that what can't be catched
    – Alex
    Commented Feb 5, 2017 at 5:16
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I found https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/silentblock/

It is less user friendly than LeechBlock (no GUI, regular expressions as input) but works well

  • is available without rooting phone makes possible to block list of domains, making them unavailable for browsing
  • both blacklist and whitelist is defined by regexps so it is a very powerful tool
  • files in defined locations are used as input so settings by definition are in files
  • without any ads, negative reviews are left by people disliking regular expressions
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