What is the "Local content cache" feature?

"Local content caching" is an optional feature in AdBlock for Chrome and AdBlock for Firefox. It allows your browser to get some of the information it needs to show you a web page from the AdBlock extension on your computer instead of from a server.

Local content caching provides a couple of important benefits:

  1. Bandwidth savings and faster load times. Some of the most commonly used web software libraries (web page "building blocks") are pulled directly from the AdBlock extension on your computer, avoiding the need to download that information from the Internet. That leaves more bandwidth for other purposes.
  2. Privacy protection. Many of the servers that deliver common web software libraries to your browser are owned by big technology companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. These companies can learn a lot about you by tracking your browser's requests for information. Local content caching "short-circuits" some of those requests, making it harder for companies to create a profile of you based on your online activities.

So, summing up, how do you know whether to turn on local content caching? For most people in most circumstances, there is no reason not to. We're making it an optional feature for now in case there are issues we haven't thought of. If you use a Chrome extension called HTTPS Everywhere, however, please see the note below.

How To Turn Local Content Caching On and Off

The local content cache feature is an optional setting. To turn it on, click the AdBlock button in the browser toolbar, select Options, and on the GENERAL tab, select the checkbox next to Enable local content caching for popular website libraries.

HTTPS Everywhere

If you use a Chrome extension called HTTPS Everywhere, you might sometimes see an error that looks like this: "This extension failed to redirect a network request to [] because another extension (AdBlock) redirected it to []." This is HTTPS Everywhere telling you it couldn't redirect an insecure request to HTTPS because AdBlock intercepted and redirected the request to its local content cache instead.

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