pihole is mature and very functional. i jumped in last summer, no regrets.
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Plus it's easy to run multiple AdGuard Home servers and keep them in sync using https://github.com/bakito/adguardhome-sync
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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I am very happy with Blocky https://github.com/0xERR0R/blocky
No UI, just a simply config file if that is your thing.
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.
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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).
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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
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
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Yes, been running one for many years and it’s great.
Shoutout to the PiHole team!
Pfblockerng on pfsense is very powerful.
Safing.io Portmaster
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.
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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.
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