Adblock Plus is one of the most popular desktop browser extensions, but so far it hasn't had a real presence on mobile. That starts to change today with the beta release of Adblock Browser, an Android browser that blocks ads by default. The app is built off of Firefox's open-source Android browser, so you know more or less what to expect if you've used that before.

The browser works, but it isn't the fastest option

In a brief test of Adblock Browser on a Galaxy S6, the app appeared to remove all ads that should have been displayed on each page. Its overall performance, however, appeared to be a bit worse than Chrome's, often stuttering while scrolling. Given that Adblock's primary purpose is to remove annoyances from the web, performance issues may prevent it — at least for the moment — from being as useful as it's meant to be, discouraging its use. Site owners, certainly, would appreciate that.

Installing Adblock Browser isn't as straightforward as going into the Play Store, but it's simple enough. Once you've joined Adblock Plus' Google+ community page, you'll be able to download the APK. You may need to disable some of Android's security checks to install it, but you're basically good to go from there.

Adblock Plus already offers an extension for Firefox's Android browser, but it says that the extension is "extremely limited" compared to the desktop. "Building our own browser gives us a lot more freedom to integrate adblocking as a first class feature that’s easy to understand and configure," Adblock Plus' Felix Dahlke writes in a blog post. Dahlke says that the goals of the beta are to fix bugs and improve usability. Eventually, Adblock Plus would like to give users more options when it comes to how ads are removed.