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.
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.
How often do you update the pi
How does it compare against a Firewalla?
I prefer to use NextDNS on my router and add block lists there instead. Also works while on cell reception.
Do you pay for it?
No, a NextDNS account is free.
It’s actually virtually free. Free for only 300k requests a month which is quite easy to reach, specially if you use it with your family. Buy a paid plan though for € 1,99 and you have unlimited requests.
…until your family complains that their favorite site has stopped working.
Pi-Hole these days allows you to create Groups so you can set certain devices to fewer or less restrictive blocklists or just leave their connection untouched entirely. Groups is basically how you solve the problem of it breaking something for someone else.
Source: Pissed off my roommate who I somehow accidentally blocked from using Google to appraise his magic cards or something.
Yeah, you always have to account for the Wife Factor with things like this. Good luck convincing your wife to stop clicking on sponsored links on Google, especially when it’s what she’s searching for.
😂
Yeah I run it on my wifi. Yesterday it killed rouvy.com when I wanted to go for a ride. I don’t think it has decreased the number of ads I see either - all devices runs adblockers anyway
I use the OISD list for family members and I haven’t received a single complaint in years.
I might have to try that. I had pi hole set up but my gf couldn’t use facebook so I was politely asked to remove it
Whitelisting facebook was real easy. Just by checking the query log you can identify what to whitelist and single click on a button will fix it.
I think it was specifically for mobile - I whitelisted the facebook domain (easy) but blocking various ad servers would also break functionality on the site.
It all just depends on the level of blocking you put in place. Basic adblock and malware lists tend to not break much if anything. It’s when you get into tracker blocking that some sites break.
Hahaha my partner just started not using the wifi and didn’t tell me, I found out when her data ran out 🙄
I’d recommend setting an ad-blocking preferred DNS if the person isn’t overly tech savvy
Oh haha! My wife had a similar issue with Google and those “deals” it shows, when searching for something to buy :D
Haha. Same with mine. She was mad that she was not seeing ads everywhere as she liked to interact with them and buy stuff.
God regular people are so fucking weird haha. I just can’t wrap my mind around wanting to click on ads.
Sometimes I wonder if working in local television news for 10 years and being subjected to ads basically constantly broke something in me.
Honestly I don’t hate it if the ads are tailored enough. I don’t ever directly click ads, but I have seen products before that wormed into my mind and had me looking for similar/the same later. I don’t hate advertisements for legit products that actually fit my interest. I only hate ads because of how many of them are in my face and trying to convince me I need something that I don’t.
Pop up ads in the early internet days are what made me not ever want to click on an ad. Regular people must have missed that era of Internet.
Had a family member complaining that they couldn’t access “the internet” and found that they only clicked ads on google searches…
(boggle)🧠
The state of computer literacy and media literacy is appalling.
I’ll definitely give those a spin when I’ve done a fresh install of pihole 6. I’ve been hesitant to do so because I don’t know how to do a fresh install easily when I’ve already used unbound to make my pi-hole a recursive DNS server and one of my pi-holes also doubles as an immich server so I have to do a lot of backing up I as of yet have been too lazy to do.
Since the update my pi-hole is stoll blocking stuff, but I can not reach the interface anymore. I’m on DietPi and use Unbound as well.
https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/cannot-access-web-interface-after-pihole-6-update/77366/4
The
git fsckfailing showed a corrupt repository so I researched how to repair a git repository and found the toolgit-repair- installed and ran this with the--forceflag and this repaired the repository.Then ran
git pulland the repository was now healthy. My web UI also works now!!Probably a silly feature request but would it be worthwhile to add a
git fsckto all the pihole stores in the debug script?To start you should go to your web admin folder at
/var/www/html/adminand run agit fsckto make sure you’re having the same problem as the person above. If you get a lot of failures, its likely the same issue.So based on this resolved thread, it looks like you need to install
git-repairand then once again go to your pihole web admin interface folder at/var/www/html/admin.Then once in that folder run
git-repair --forceand then when that completes rungit pull. Hopefully that resolves this issue for you.Thanks! This sounded very promising but I don’t get any errors from
git fsck, so I have to keep looking for other solutions.
I had problems with the update on a previous pihole install already up and running with unbound and cloudflared. Did the v6 update as soon as it dropped just for some excitement. During install I did not disable lighttdp or remove it. When I started having failures to access the web portal it had to do with lighttpd running, stopping and disabling it with systemctl fixed most of my problems.
For months my wife couldn’t download podcasts off Spotify only for me to discover it was pihole the entire time.
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 -upYeah I don’t think TUIs are a great way to interface with most things. It’s a needlessly outdated method and provides an unnecessary barrier to less technically inclined people, and when a GUI interface is present anyways it just kind of dumb. TUIs are slower to execute things with than GUI 99% of the time, and always less intuitive.
I hate this ridiculous nerd trope of loving TUIs, it’s getting old and over used.
TUIs are slower to execute things with than GUI 99% of the time, and always less intuitive.
This is, as you mentioned, true for “less technically inclined” people. But that doesn’t make TUIs “dumb” as those more used to terminals may find it faster and more convenient.
In the era of GUIs, it is easy to forget about terminals, but they are not an “old” thing. They are a tool, used every day by millions of people, for countless different purposes.
Many times, it is also the most straightforward interface between you and your computer.
Maybe your opinionated assertion of what’s better ought to be recognized for what it is?
Your points are salient until you start yucking other people’s yum. The person you were responding to was obviously being good natured.
I’m not yucking in their yum though, I’m clarifying why I have the opinion I have, because they said they were curious. The yucking is entirely your projections, I even start the response by stating it’s my opinion and not objective truth.
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.
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.
Thank you! Ill look into it
I second the Tailscale recommendation. It was easy and has spoiled me. I notice immediately if I’m browsing my phone at work and I’m not connected to my pihole lol
You have your Pihole setup at work?
Nah they’re connecting to their home network via a Tailscale exit node which basically runs all your
requeststraffic through your device/router at home/ external server, P2P encrypted.And if it’s got an adblocker on that network you soon notice if it’s not connected since all the ads come flooding in.
I too third Tailscale, since it is literally now saving me money because work has give us pretty darn fast WiFi albeit with a nanny filter which the above exit node breaks you out of so I now don’t pay for as much data on my cellular plan.
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.
Ditto, NextDNS has been great for that. I tried their paid version as well but downgraded since I never ran into that many queries. I’ve heard good things about quad9 too, which I think is European.
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
SmartTube has Sponsorblock integrated by the way.
Nice I’ll check this out. Last time I checked lg webos TV’s needed some sketchy Russian jailbreak to sideload apps but this appears to look a bit more legit at first glance!
oh, this will do nicely. thanks!
Note this is just for “sponsored content” that creators may slip into their videos
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.
Better yet, you can setup DoT or DoH, so no need for VPN. It’s relatively easy to do with Adguard Home (one needs a domain and a certificate).
I cba managing it on my own, so I just use controld.com
Hey, another controld user.
Read this as block AIDS
I use Adguard for this purpose. You need a license to access some features. But, it can block ads even on sites which directly serve ads
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