What I like about pihole vs. dedicated ad-blockers, is that a pihole can block telemetry as well. There are lists of Microsoft and other data-gatherers you can import, and even if you can't stop the data collection, it dead-ends the attempts to upload it.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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Pihole is great. Been running it for years. It’s almost set-it-and-forget it. There are other ad-blocking services, some free and some not, some with more features but those are usually non-free. Many don’t require the setup that a Raspberry Pi does.
Downsides to Pihole:
People who use your wifi will stay with their old habits of clicking one of the first search results which is usually “sponsored”, an ad, and it will be blocked. People get irritated and it takes them a while to come around.
Raspberry Pis tend to eat SD cards. It’s gotten a lot better and it doesn’t happen as often, but once you get the Pi set up correctly, make a backup mirror of the card so it’s easy to get a new one up and running should the card fail.
The best mobile manager (Pi-Hole Remote) just went non-free for a bunch of features.
It doesn’t block everything. A standard suite of browser plugins for ad- and tracking blockers should be used.
Sometimes a website or service won’t work correctly and you have to sort out whether it’s a browser ad blocker or pihole that’s causing the issue and whitelist the address.
The good stuff-
You can create a VPN on your home LAN, use DDNS, and connect when you’re out and about to get ad-blocking on your mobile. Particularly useful for iphones where they don’t let you have ad-blockers for your browsers.
Customizable blocklists, blacklists and whitelists. There are several user-made lists out there that are useful.
You can easily see what is “phoning home” on your LAN and block it if you want.
Easy to update, easy install on a RPi, and if you install a VNC you can update and manage remotely without Pi-Hole Remote.
It’s free.
I prefer adguard home, much better UI and updating it is easier...at least compared to last time I tried where i had to SSH in to the pi-hole to update it since it didn't allow it through the web interface like adguard home does. Not a big issue, but still a little annoying compared to just doing it from the web interface.
i had to SSH in to the pi-hole to update it
You make it sound like a chore instead of a delight. Curious.
Especially if you've set up key verification for SSH, you don't even have to mess with a password.
Then it's literally just pihole -up
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Anyone have any particularly good info about AdGuard re: Russia? My understanding is that the devs are Russian. Seems like they have set things up to explicitly be outside control of the regime, but it makes me worry without some ironclad info that it's safe.
How often do you update the pi
At this point the ads are winning because its getting much harder to stop them. A well tuned pihole is great for browsing and it is really noticeable when Im away from home. It has to be tuned, blocklists are great but you will definitely be managing the lists yourself. It is SO EASY to do, it is the most user-friendly open-source network tool I have ever used! Sleep on this to your own peril
look into a VPN to your home network when you leave your house. you can also set it to "on demand" so it automatically turns on when you disconnect from your home wifi.
Thats my next step considering that Im getting requests from house members for it. Took some time to smooth out the blocklists and now everyone loves it. Any recommendations for a pi3 running pihole with vpn?
Tailscale is nice and you can give different access to different people. It also tends to get past most VPN blocks.
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I had set up this configuration around 2016 and found it a little clunky. I called it a SkyHole. It was great, and now we have the ability to install DNS profiles on most phones, or configure DNS profiles for PCs such that I use a (“free”) commercial provider and get ad blocking which takes care of 99% of the noise, and don’t have to fuss about with maintaining a dedicated device.
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I prefer to use NextDNS on my router and add block lists there instead. Also works while on cell reception.
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i’d love to be able to get rid of youtube ads at the network level.
Not possible at the network level, unfortunately.
On some TVs you can sideload apps that'll do it.
Slightly similar, there is also sponsorblock for TVs, this doesn't need sideloading and is ran on any host on your LAN
Me too… piHole does not do this unfortunately, especially on anything that isnt a pc.
and for your mobile devices you can set up an on-demand VPN to turn on whenever you're not on your home network.
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Read this as block AIDS
How does it compare against a Firewalla?
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