Focus vs Via Browser
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Focus
Enhance your browsing with a customizable video player, powerful ad blocker, and advanced reading tools. Enjoy hands-free page turning, web translation, and script support for a personalized online experience.
- Customizable video player
- Userscript support (JavaScript, Tampermonkey)
- Advanced reading mode
- Hands-free auto page turning
- Powerful ad blocking
- Web translation
- Bookmark syncing
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【Video Mode】 Customizable player supporting floating video, playback speed control, picture-in-picture, DLNA and AirPlay casting, and one-click screen lock. 【Userscripts】 Supports both JavaScript and Tampermonkey 5.3.0 syntax. After years of user feedback, Focus has greatly improved compatibility with various scripts, ensuring more scripts run smoothly on Focus. 【Reading Mode】 The best reading mode on iOS, supporting automatic preloading of the next page, font size, line height, margin adjustments, and webpage theme selection. Supports text filtering and regular expression rule filtering. 【Auto Page Turning】 Hands-free page turning for novels, comics, or forums. Supports search engines like Baidu, Google, Bing, and Yandex. Try it out now! 【Redirect Blocker】 Can block malicious app redirects within webpages. 【Custom Homepage】 Add your favorite websites to the homepage and set a personalized browser homepage. 【Web Translation】 Super fast translation, making it easy to understand any webpage and breaking down language barriers. 【Ad Blocking】 Powerful ad-blocking feature supporting AdBlock Plus and AdGuard syntax. Includes ad tagging, webpage blacklists, and custom ad rules. 【Bookmark Sync】 Import bookmarks from Safari, Chrome, and Alook into Focus and export Focus bookmarks to those browsers, ensuring seamless bookmark syncing. 【URL Scheme】 Open URLs via Shortcuts: FocusBrowser://search?url=search term or link. 【Other Features】 Supports iPad, iCloud bookmark sync, dark mode, incognito mode, ad marking mode, fingerprint/FaceID login, feedback, and full-screen mode. 【Privacy & Security】 Focus respects your privacy. Incognito mode doesn’t save browsing history, cache, or cookies.
Via Browser
A minimalist and lightweight web browser designed for speed and minimal memory usage. It offers extensive customization options, ad blocking, and essential browsing features for a clutter-free experience.
- Quiet browsing experience
- Low memory usage
- Minimalist design
- Customizable interface
- Ad blocking
- Night mode
- Request desktop site
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• Quiet Browser Via browser won’t push news and other things to you. No bother to your device. • Mini Browser Via browser use much less memory usage on your device. Keep your device as fast as new. • Lite Browser Via browser is designed for Minimalism. Best choice for geek user and who enjoy lite products. • Customized Browser You can easily customize Via browser. This is your own web browser. • Fast Browser Via browser is smooth for your device. And we optimized a lot for fast browsing. Here are some features of Via browser • iCloud sync • Ad blocking • User-script support • Night mode • Request desktop site • Translate • Find in page • Multi search engine support • Saving webpages • ... Enjoy your time with Via Browser.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Via Browser at none against Focus's 1. Via Browser also leads on review sentiment (79% vs 54%) and iOS requirement (11.0 vs 13.0). Focus's advantage is update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 3 months) and ratings volume (4.9K vs 116). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Focus sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Via Browser asks for nothing beyond the download.
Focus holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Focus has 4.9K ratings behind it against 116, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 54% of Focus's written reviews are positive against 79% of Via Browser's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Focus ships an update every 3 weeks, Via Browser every 3 months. Both last shipped on September 28, 2026.
| Parameter | Focus | Via Browser |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (4.9K ratings) — better | 4.5 (116 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 53.8% of reviews | 79.2% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 4.9K — better | 116 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 34 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | 庆彬 邓 | 亚锋 涂 |
Customer experience
Focus
Via Browser
User reviews
Focus
From 4.9K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Fast download speeds
- 👍 Useful features
- 💡 Powerful script support
- 🔒 Effective ad-blocking
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashes and reloading issues
- 🔋 Draining battery life
- ⛔ Removal of download functionality
Via Browser
From 116 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Extremely fast and lightweight browser
- 💾 Minimal storage footprint (4.8MB)
- ⚙️ Advanced customization options (CSS/JS injection, ad-blocking rules)
- 🔒 Strong privacy controls and data management
- 🎯 Clean, minimalist UI design
Room to improve
- ❌ Sync functionality completely broken across devices
- 🐛 Bookmarks disappear after several days of use
- 💾 Excessive cache accumulation (200MB+ after minimal use)
- 🔧 iOS version lacks many Android features
- ⚠️ Website compatibility issues (iCloud, some sites block access)
Bugs and requests
Focus
Reported bugs
3 issues- Incompatibility with certain websites
- Inconsistent script performance
- Inability to export bookmarks
Requested features
4 requests- Add mute tab button
- Implement desktop mode
- Improve video playback controls
- Restore video download feature
Via Browser
Reported bugs
12 issues- Sync not working between devices
- Bookmarks disappearing after days of use
- Cache not clearing properly, excessive memory usage
- Settings URL field resets on app restart
- Userscripts install but don't execute
Show 7 moreShow fewer
- Desktop site request not functioning reliably
- iCloud website compatibility error
- Untitled sleep tabs making navigation difficult
- Text file downloads open instead of saving
- Status bar not appearing consistently
- Meta theme color not respected for dark/light mode
- Memory usage increases dramatically with minimal browsing
Requested features
17 requests- Set as default browser
- Cross-device bookmark synchronization
- Resource sniffer/traffic inspection tool
- QR code scanner functionality
- Userscript/Tampermonkey full support
Show 12 moreShow fewer
- Configuration import/export functionality
- Video download capability
- Background video playback
- Bookmark drag-and-drop reordering
- Floating action buttons and gesture customization
- Search engine switcher in search bar
- iCloud Keychain and passkey support
- Weather and homepage customization widgets
- Zoom functionality
- Russian language support
- JavaScript disable toggle
- Redirect blocking feature
In-app purchases
Focus
- Pro Lifetime$4.99
Via Browser
No in-app purchases
