Selfhosted

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.

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.

I have the LCARs theme for my PiHole.

All other details are irrelevant.

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

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

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

Adguard-home is way better than pi-hole imo

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 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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Pfblockerng on pfsense is very powerful.

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

Shoutout to the PiHole team!