Pi-hole

What hackers pick instead

• AdGuard HomeNetwork-wide DNS ad blocker people run at home so every device goes ad-free; the common caveat is that allow lists take a while to tune.48recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 201 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Everybody is so "¡wow cool!" about Pi-Holes, until a desired website breaks... and then DNS-filtering gets temporarily disabled , typically forever.

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Don't Download Apps”

2. I have had to mess with the configuration and troubleshoot things so often that I don't feel comfortable recommending it to non-technical people.

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Don't Download Apps”

3. It is pretty easy if you have some technical knowledge but I would say that it is generally out of reach for the general population

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs”

4. "Install a pihole" may be acceptable on HN but not for the broader public and certainly is far from being a strong defense alone

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “TikTok is tracking you, even if you don't use the app”

5. My vote for the best privacy option is always going to be just run pi-hole with your own recursive nameservers.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Show HN: Running the second public ODoH relay”

6. Extremely intuitive, relatively inexpensive... you can even force your entire network to obey ad-blocking lists

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Don't Download Apps”

7. Owntone, pihole and wireguard is reason enough alone to put an old laptop into service as a home server.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “What I self-host”

8. I installed pihole on our home network. She immediately began complaining that the internet was broken.

   Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “uBlock Origin Is Giving Up the Fight to Keep Ads Off Facebook”

9. pihole blocks a massive amount of ads in my home. It is extremely rare that any website ever breaks.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “2026 resolution: if Mozilla tampers with "uBlock Origin", I'm giving it up”

10. adguard or pihole on your local network so no analytics/tracking data is still being pushed out

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Penguin Mail – open-source Rust email client for Linux with AI”

11. PiHole/Adblocker have become essential for traversing the cesspool that is the modern internet.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “The 512KB Club”

12. Pihole is great for DNS filtering but doesn't hide elements, no filtering and script blocking.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Edge, Opera to follow”

13. put it behind a PiHole or the like, that should allow you to get rid of the worst offenders

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “LG says we're fake news [video]”

14. You might have a better luck with network level ad blocker like pi-hole or adguard for eg

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Show HN: Firefox in WebAssembly”

15. Minimal fuss, efficient setup, little maintenance, I don't have to understand the guts.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Kea DHCP: Modern, open source DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 server”

16. how pleasant and functional the web is when they’re at my pi-hole protected apartment

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ad Blockers helped kill the open web”

17. It's definitely better than nothing, and greatly improves things, but UBO is better.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?”

18. Pihole provides ad protection and privacy for my whole home network. It's also free.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey”

19. Pihole + Unbound as recursive DNS to avoid DNS poisoning and personal data tracking.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Fuck the Cloud (2009)”

20. You could run pihole and a slew of other useful utilities on your self-hosted server

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars”

21. Don't forget a pihole! Sometimes I really do forget how obnoxious the internet is

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “I Fired Google”

22. pi.hole is a great ad blocker which applies to all of the devices on your network

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “LittleSnitch for Linux”

23. install a PiHole so it can resolve ads/spyware/malware before it reaches the net

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Zuckerberg lied about concern for child safety”

24. I set up pi-hole at family members houses to block ads and telemetry on theirs

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Roku LT Operating System open source distribution”

25. takes a few minutes with pi hole, and it's got a very functional web interface

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “TikTok unlawfully tracks shopping habits and use of dating apps?”

26. For blocking things I have Pi-Hole, which is under my control for that reason.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Cloudflare flags archive.today as "C&C/Botnet"; no longer resolves via 1.1.1.2”

27. It has a high maintenance overhead, at least for me. It would block too much, then my wife would complain

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appear After 5 Seconds”

28. I'd be afraid of stuff being randomly broken. Eg at some point pi-hole made YouTube history not work.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “What I self-host”

29. My pihole updated, broke its own dns, stopped working, and broke dns for every device on my network.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “macOS 26 breaks custom DNS settings including .internal”

30. That's my experience as well. Also need to intentionally disable it e.g. when using Cashback sites.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “What I self-host”

31. It doesn’t block the majority of the ads and DNS blacklisting on its own breaks websites.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “2026 resolution: if Mozilla tampers with "uBlock Origin", I'm giving it up”

32. after installing pi-hole and using it on my wifi, Netflix on the TV stopped working

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “How I block all online ads”

33. I had to whitelist so many roku-related domains that it basically became pointless.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch”

34. set up something like PiHole and direct DNS traffic through it? It won't solve the overall slowness of the Chromebooks but it will help with some web sites.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ask HN: Chromebook Leads for K-8 School In Need?”

35. Just the friction of a dns record (that yes, I can easily override) was enough to keep myself away from all of it.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Doomscrolling ourselves to death”

36. This is the best of both worlds, the simplicity of unencrypted DNS while encrypting traffic where it matters.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Shutting down our public encrypted DNS”

37. These are all straightforward solutions that don't require government-mandated age verification systems

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban”

38. The stuff that fucking works - Home Assistant, the Pi-Hole, my Docker containers - are what is good

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Why is Everyone in Tech so sad?”

39. Pihole/adguard are great, and while their function overlaps with uBo, they are still different.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “WBlock: A New Ad-Blocker for Safari”

40. Use as many layers of protection (uBlock, PiHole, various other extensions, etc.) as possible

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “'Your Frustration Is the Product'”