Pi-Hole or something else for network ad blocking?

pihole is mature and very functional. i jumped in last summer, no regrets.

AdGuard Home and blocky are other popular options. I switched over to AdGuard Home a while back because it supported DNS over HTTPS although I'm not sure if that's still a relevant reason. I run AGH as a docker container but it is easy to run in a LXC or VM. There's also a tool to sync configs if you need multiple instances. Notice: AGH block lists are formatted like uBlock Origin lists so you will not be able to use PiHole style lists.

DNS based ad blockers won't work when ads are served from the same place as the content. Which is why DNS based ad blockers don't work against Twitch or YouTube. So YMMV.

If you're looking to block interface ads and select streaming service ads there are block lists available like this one. The game with smart TVs is blocking the ads breaks the TV a little because sometimes it calls back to the same servers for updates and misc info like weather.

Pi-hole is great, but unfortunately ads in YouTube or other streaming services is not one of the things it blocks.

Glad I read this - all my other devices block ads perfectly well already, but was wondering if I could block YouTube ads on my Apple TV... I guess not!
- If you’re comfortable self hosting you can use isponsorblocktv to block ads/sponsorship on YouTube on AppleTv and various smart TVs. I use this + Pi-Hole https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
- Your best bet is getting a platform your can sideload apps onto and running SmartTube
- Not sure of any downside yet but setting your country to Albania via vpn removes all YouTube ads on Apple TV. Was just informed of this yesterday and as mentioned there may be reasons to not do this.
PiHole and similar services just use DNS blocking, which only works if the ads are served via a third-party ad server. Sites with their own ad inventory (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc) can't be blocked this way since they can just serve the ads from the same domain as their regular content.
I wonder why we don't have AI browser extensions that can recognise and obscure possible ads / unwanted content yet
- Because the AI isn't needed, and would be computationally expensive.
  
  Extensions like ublock origin and sponsorblock work just fine.
- Simple: That would be the opposite of making money for companies

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
DNS	Domain Name Service/System
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
HTTPS	HTTP over SSL
IP	Internet Protocol
IoT	Internet of Things for device controllers
LXC	Linux Containers
PiHole	Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
VPN	Virtual Private Network

7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.

[Thread #431 for this sub, first seen 15th Jan 2024, 23:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

NextDNS.

Also, be wary of relying on anything blocking ads on streaming services this way. They will likely serve them within the video stream, so not network-blockable.

NextDNS caps your queries per month on the free account. ControlD doesn't and you can pick a various mix of their public DNS resolvers. You don't necessarily get the granular control with doing it this way for free that you can get with NextDNS though.

If you do check out these, make sure you click the Secure Resolvers if you'd prefer for DLS/DOQ/DNS over HTTPS instead of Legacy.
- It’s like $20 year, not everything good can be free.
I’m also a fan of NextDNS. Have an unbound instance querying it.

Adguard-home is way better than pi-hole imo

Pihole user for more than 5 years,.can confirm that it is indeed better, made the switch few months ago
- What makes adguard home better than pihole? Genuinely curious, I'm running pihole now and have been for a couple of years without issues.
- What makes it better other than the UI? I'm weary of using it because it is developed by Russian developers.
- As an AdGuard home user for more than a few years, I switched back to Pihole because it wasn’t really any better. It was also easier to pair pihole with Unbound.
Plus it's easy to run multiple AdGuard Home servers and keep them in sync using https://github.com/bakito/adguardhome-sync
- Oh, oh, oh, gimme that!!
  
  First time i hear about something like that, i'm going to install it asap

I use both. Pi-hole running in a docker container on one of my home servers which my gateway is configured to assign as the default DNS for all clients, and uBlock Origin on all my browsers to catch everything else.

Pihole is pretty good at catching ads on platforms that are not suited to browser based blockers (IoT devices, streaming boxes etc) but it isn't perfect and is best used in conjunction with another solution.

Pi-Hole’s great. Got my primary instance on a Pi 4 and three secondaries (one per vlan) on LXCs. Works so well it feels weird seeing ads when I’m not at home, I’m actually considering using Tailscale to route all my queries through my home connection.

I second that, turns out 90% of the queries on my network come from my Libratone speakers and they seem to desperately try and reach China (.com.cn)
I do this and it works great. Ad block on all my devices regardless of proprietary sandboxes. I also use Syncthing over my tailnet IP addresses so that traffic never leaves my “grounds”. I’m slowly building out a whole suite of services I host only within my tailnet, jellyfin, calibre, invidious, it been a great learning experience. I’m about to set up a proper home lab, finally moving everything off an old laptop.
Hint: you don't need to route all your traffic through your VPN to make use of the pihole adblocking: Just DNS. If your at home internet is even moderately stable/good then this should barely affect your roaming internet experience, since DNS traffic is such a small part of all traffic.

Also, since I'm already mirroring the configuration of my PiHole instance to a secondary one, I'm considering putting a tertiary one on some forever-free cloud server instance and just using that when not at home (put it into the same wireguard vpn to prevent security nightmares). That way my roaming private DNS wouldn't even depend on my home internet.

I run pihole on proxomox, and also opnsense in the same box. Then you can forward all port 53 traffic to your pihole. Some devices have hard-coded DNS that will bypass the DHCP DNS.

Some chromecasts stop working when you do that.
- Chuck 'em in the garbage and get something that doesn't break when you insist on privacy.
- Really? I run several Chromecasts, and I block their access to all DNS services except my internal Pi-holes. They work just fine.

Adguard home is like pihole, but has built in encrypted DNS options. For easy mode NextDNS.

They pretty much all have the same block lists to choose from.

I use 2 cloudflare containers that the pihole points to. That gives me DNS over https but it's more of a mission to set up.

If you are more into a full DNS solution that can also block Technitium DNS is a reasonable choice. It is fairly userfriendly, can be run in an LXC easily (I am doing exactly that), able to use multiple block lists in any combination you want, can be controlled by an API, is regularly updated,etc.

I couldn't be happier with it, even though the learning curve is somewhat steep, when you are new to DNS. It is a fully fledged DNS server after all.

DNS based ad blocking does not block video ads served by streaming services. You'll need a modified client specific to the service you want to block ads for to achieve that.

I am very happy with Blocky https://github.com/0xERR0R/blocky

No UI, just a simply config file if that is your thing.

I went with a pi running pi-hole. I got it as a project where the tool is the project. But, it's essential infrastructure now and I don't want to mess with it incase I break it. I'm an idiot with a poor history with pi guides so far, so I will break it. It's running the adblock fine, I assume it's doing the tracking and malware blocking fine too.

Sadly, that's where I leave the project for now, I had intended to give it a HDD and some... other... software but I really don't want to break it. I tried convincing the better half that I obviously need to N+1 but she wisely did not see reason.

If you want to try setting it up in high availability with failover, give me a poke. And until then - go to Teleporter in the settings, and download the backup. You can restore from there.

One thing worth saying is this - you can grab a cheap refurbished ssd (the smaller - the better), check it's SMART data for any red flags, and attach it to the pi as OS disk. It will be much more reliable than SD, but overkill if you only run pi on the box. Alternatively look into log2ram, it keeps your SD card alive for longer :D but backup first!
- Thanks. I already have Log2Ram running to prolong the life of the SD. My planned disaster relief is a spare SD, already set up and taped to the box ready to swap and reboot in case of emergency. SD cards are cheap so chucking <£10 at the setup once in a while is no big thing. A fresh install on the new SD allows me to improve on what I've already done, for example the new SD I'll run DietOS instead of Raspbian, and reinforce skills. Less time efficient but that's no matter when the box is working and it's a hobby. I can then keep the old SD card taped inside the case as a physical back up. Perhaps more expensive in the long run, but an SD card taped to the inside of the case with simple instructions is an easy sell to the fiancée.
  
  My experience with guides has shaken my confidence quite a bit. Which is fine, I'll get over myself and the point is to learn, so me hitting snags is a good thing. But, until I have a functioning back up I'm not going to be fucking with it. Facebook cannot go down on account of my education.
  
  But if I may, I have one question, a bunch of recommendations have the setup "segregated" (I dunno the word) in Docker and Portainers but I don't understand the rationale. I wasn't intending on doing this, instead opting to install Pi-hole, Log2Ram, UFW, and the... other... softwares directly to the OS for simplicity. Why would one set up a Pi-hole et al in a containers instead of directly?
  
  My current set up is Raspbian OS running Pi-hole as ad, tracker, malware block and DHCP (the ISP router is a Sky2 box so no IP or DNS customisation), Log2Ram and UncomplicatedFireWall.

There’s nothing really bad with PiHole but I moved from it to AdGuard, both on proxmox. The UI brought me in, makes management a bit easier. It also supports DoH right out of the box.

Try em both. See what you think.

I ran Pi-hole for years. Switched to adguardhome running on 2 servers (primary and secondary) with AGH sync keeping the two instances identical. I like the UI better, dns rewrites, and the ability to simply block services entirely with a single click.

I did this as well, I still have 2 pihole instances running with gravitysync for now, but AGH sync is much easier to setup and maintain. My 2 pihole instances are running for my guest network only and AGH is running everything else.

https://lemmy.world/post/10327372

This dude uses mini PCs for pi type tasks.

Might be easier to get a hold of.

Good luck OP

PiHole runs great on older Raspberry Pi’s(I am still using a pi3). Older models are still very easy to get and a readily available from the approved resellers list.
- Was running on my original pi b up till I replaced it recently with a pi 4. Was a little slow but worked fine.
- Agreed that's what I'm doing as well.

One thing I've found is it's good at blocking ads via mobile gaming. The downside is if those ads return rewards in-game.

It takes a little experimentation to get it right, but you can find out which urls are involved with your game's ads and whitelist them

I love pihole, for my family it is better as it helps on all the devices. Being able to block malware and tracking is nice too

I set up pihole a few months ago. I added a few dozen of the highest recommended block lists, but I wasn't impressed at all. It didn't seem very effective at blocking ads in both real world tests and tests that I found online specifically for testing your adblocker.

The best test I have is my wife complaining, that ads in Google results cannot be opened. It seems to work flawlessly for me 😂

On a more serious note, what tests are these? The thing is, the ad domain is either in the blocklist or not. Ads inside apps are hard to block (I even have adaway on my android, and some slip through as eg Instagram reuses the backend domains/endpoints for ad delivery).
- This is one of the ones I used
- I got the wife complaining about the google results being blocked, but very little else. Most sites are still Frankenstein’s monsters full of atrocious ads.

Yes, been running one for many years and it’s great.

Shoutout to the PiHole team!

Pfblockerng on pfsense is very powerful.

NextDNS is awesome if you want the simple solution, and don't have any hardware to install services on. Thee free version is somehwta limited to queries(300k per month), but personally didn't hit those when I was using the free tier.

NextDNS has a lot of nice customization and can easily had custom block lists. The pro version is 2euros a month I believe. I personally stick with NextDNS due to never having to worry about updating the service and it always just works. I also have it hooked to my Tailnet, that way all my devices use it by default.

But ofc, Pihole, Adguard and the rest are also awesome. Best to just pick one that looks good for you. The end goal here is to just have something running in the background rather than nothing.

I've used https://controld.com/

Pinhole is still a thing. If you want other options there is also adguard.

Pi-hole and AdGuard home are both good. It kind of comes down to which UI you like better.

Pihole is great for blocking on things that you can't install a local adblocker on. It does have downsides though, it can be annoying and block things you don't want it to. It might not block ads well on your tv or might impair the functionality in weird ways. It can depend lot on which lists you add, but there are many available and they are usually quite well documented about their intentions.

I use Blocky. I switched from PiHole because I didn’t have need for all the features (DHCP, Dashboard) and honestly it was a slow day and I had nothing better to do.

I actually had a lot of fun a couple years ago deploying PiHole on one of my RaspberryPi’s and routing all my household machines through it. It worked great UNTIL.. my kid was turning in empty homework on Google Classroom and his teachers were getting up him about it. We chastised him thinking it was his fault until I finally discovered that Pihole was messing up his uploads to GC and literally causing this problem. I got super angry with it and walked away without even trying to troubleshoot. Had to profusely apologise not only to his teachers but to him.

Safing.io Portmaster

I use knot-resolver with the big block list from https://oisd.nl/ and it works great.

I felt the same way about youtube, streaming, shopping and general browsing: too many ads. Ruins the content. I set up a pi-hole as an experiment to see if it would do what it said and what others said about it. Manage your expectations here. Pi-hole works well for blocking a lot of static information and ads in your browser and a lot of apps on iOS and Android. It does not block video ads on Youtube or Hulu, it does not block ads for Roku or Firestick or Smart TV apps for example, it just does not work because of the technical limitations of how the PiHole software is designed. Using a regular PC with adblock browser extension installed as well gets rid of 99% of ads including video ads from adcdns. PiHole is incredibly easy to setup and install, the pay off in quality of life is enormous. I cannot recommend it more to someone that has a little networking knowledge base. If you can figure out how to port forward and run a handful of command lines you can complete a pihole setup in an hour.

Why would you want to port forward your dns?
- Sorry, you wouldnt and didnt mean to imply that. I was suggesting that port forwarding is a fairly easy task and if one is confident in their ability to do that, than they should be able to complete a PiHole install.

If someone really wants this service but do not want to (or cannot) host it themself, https://ovpn.com offer this in their client. I used to have a pi-hole selfhosted but not anymore. Using their client on my phone as well solved the problem with blocking ads while not at home.

Yeah do it there is basically no downside. I agree with others that you may have trouble with the ads in streaming services. On my android TV, YouTube ads, for instance, aren't blocked by pihole.

When the ads come from the same domain as the content, which is the case with youtube, you can't block them with any DNS based ad blocker.

I have no experience outside of blocky, but the configuration file is so damm simple and clean I have troubles even considering anything else.

You should definitely set up pihole but I don't think it'll block ads on streaming apps unless I'm wrong and someone can point me to something that explains how I can set that up.

Yeah it's near impossible to block on streaming services because most of the ads are served up from the same DNS locations that the watchable media is hosted on.
- Right. I mean, I looked into this a few years ago when I set it up and just accepted my fate