Privacy controls

Block ads and trackers, decide what each site may use, browse in a Private Space, and review the privacy settings Lilo offers on your Mac.

This guide shows you how to block ads and trackers, let a site through, hide an element on a page, decide what a site may use, browse in a Private Space and clear what Lilo keeps. Every setting named here sits in Settings > Privacy. Open Settings with ⌘,. The full list of settings is in the settings reference, and Privacy at Lilo lists every request Lilo makes on its own.

Block ads and trackers

Blocking is on from the first launch. You don’t need to install an extension.

The blocker uses public filter lists: EasyList and EasyPrivacy from easylist.to, uBlock Origin’s lists from ublockorigin.github.io, and, for the regional lists, lists from easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org and raw.githubusercontent.com. Lilo checks for new versions every four hours at most, in the background, and not on a Low Data Mode network. Until the lists first arrive, a small list built into Lilo does the blocking. Filter lists shows how many lists are in use and when they were last updated. Click Update Now to fetch them at once.

The blocker always lets bot-defense and captcha services load (such as hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile). Sites use them to tell people from bots, and if they were blocked, those sites would show you a captcha on every visit.

Allow a site that breaks

If a site doesn’t work with blocking on, turn blocking off for that site only.

Click the shield again (Re-enable blocking on this site) to block on that site again. The sites you let through are listed under Settings > Privacy > Sites without blocking, where Block again removes a site from the list.

To let one service through on every site, for example a sign-in or image service a site depends on, add its domain to Requests never blocked. Separate domains with commas. Subdomains are included.

Hide an element on a page

You can hide a banner, a sidebar or anything else the filter lists missed. This uses the content blocker, so Block ads and trackers must be on.

Lilo hides it on every page of that site, with or without www.. Press Esc to stop without hiding anything.

To bring hidden elements back on the site you’re on, open the site’s controls (see the next section) and click Show again in the Hidden elements row. The page reloads. To remove one element at a time, go to Settings > Privacy > Settings by site, choose the site, and click Remove next to the element.

Manage what a site may use

When a site asks for your camera, microphone, location or notifications, Lilo asks you in the address bar: “example.com wants to use your camera”. Click Allow or Don’t Allow. Lilo remembers your answer for that site. Press Esc to dismiss the request without answering: the site may ask again later.

To change a decision for the site you’re on:

Settings > Privacy > Settings by site lists every site with a decided permission, a zoom level, hidden elements or stored data. Choose a site to Revoke a permission, Reset its zoom, or Clear its stored data.

To stop sites from asking at all, set Notifications, Camera and microphone or Location under Site permissions from Ask to Never ask. Requests of that kind are then refused without a prompt, except from sites you already allowed.

When a page tries to open a pop-up window without your click, Lilo blocks it and shows a button in the address bar. Click it, then Always Allow to let that site open pop-ups (the page has to try again), or Keep Blocking.

Browse privately

A Private Space is a Space whose browsing Lilo forgets when it closes.

What a Private Space keeps, and for how long:

• Cookies, site storage and cache live only in memory and are discarded when the Space closes.
• History: none. Visits in a Private Space are never recorded in history. macOS Screen Time records no usage for them, but its limits still apply there.
• Site permissions you answer are kept in memory for the Space’s life only. A site you blocked in your profile stays blocked there. Notification requests are refused without asking, as in Chrome’s incognito windows.
• Downloads: the files you download stay in your downloads folder, but the Downloads list forgets them when the Space closes.
• Tabs and terminals are not saved for the next launch.
• AI agents never see or act on one of your Private Spaces, and a conversation with an agent cannot start in one.

Bookmarked tabs can’t be moved into a Private Space, since they would be lost when it closes.

Turn on other protections

The Protection group in Settings > Privacy holds the rest:

• Always use secure connections: Lilo warns you before opening a page over HTTP. Off by default.
• Ask sites not to sell my data: sends the Global Privacy Control signal. On by default. It works on macOS 27 and later only: on macOS 26, the switch shows but has no effect.
• Prevent cross-site tracking: WebKit’s tracking prevention, which keeps sites embedded in other sites from reading their own cookies there, so they can’t follow you from site to site. On by default. Turn it off only if an embedded site you use stops working.
• Lock folders after: see Tabs and folders.

Clear your browsing data

What each choice removes:

• Browsing history: the pages you visited in that range.
• Cookies: the cookies of that range, which signs you out of websites, and the HTTP passwords Lilo saved in your keychain for this profile.
• Cached files: copies of pages and files kept to load them faster.
• Site data and permissions: all website data (storage, cookies, cache) and saved HTTP passwords. Site permissions are removed only with All time, because Lilo doesn’t record when they were given.

The clear applies to the profile of the window you’re in. The window shows how much that profile stores. To clear one site’s history only, see Downloads, history and bookmarks.

To start every launch fresh, turn on Clear site data on quit under Browsing data. When Lilo quits, it removes the cookies, storage and cache of every profile, and the HTTP passwords it saved in your keychain. History is kept.