Sodium

What it does#

Three things, in order:

1. Blocks ads and trackers at the network level. The request is refused before it is sent, using Chrome's own rule engine — so nothing is downloaded and nothing gets a chance to run.
2. Clears what they leave behind. Blocking a banner leaves the hole it sat in. Sodium collapses the empty containers, the sticky bars and the overlays that have nothing left to show.
3. Preloads links you are about to open. The page you are heading for starts loading while the pointer is still travelling.

Why there is no panel#

There is nothing to set. Sodium has a toolbar badge with a count and a tooltip, and that is deliberate — a blocker with a control panel is a blocker asking you to tune it, and every dial is a way to break a page without knowing you did.

The badge is the interface. It shows how many requests it refused on the page you are looking at. Zero on a page that should have ads usually means the page is serving them from its own domain, not that Sodium is off.

What it cannot do#

• It cannot remove an ad the site serves from its own domain as part of the page. Nothing that blocks by request can.
• It does not stop fingerprinting. That is Argon.
• It does not change how a page behaves when you look away. That is Anti-Blur.

What it can see#

The rules run inside Chrome; Sodium never reads the pages you visit and has no network access of its own. Nothing about your browsing leaves the machine.