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Edward Angert
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Pi-hole v6 Setup Guide

Pi-hole is a DNS-based ad blocker for your whole network.

Pi-hole dashboard

What Pi-hole Does

Section titled “What Pi-hole Does”

When a device on your network tries to access something from the Internet, it checks in with the Pi-hole first. The Pi-hole checks the address against a list you’ve configured, and if that resource isn’t on the list, it allows the device to connect.

Usually, the website itself still loads while the ads and trackers get blocked.

Unlike a browser extension, Pi-hole works on almost every device on your network: phones, smart TVs, game consoles, and guests’ devices, without needing to install anything. It can also block known malware domains, phishing sites, and telemetry endpoints. Blocking ad server requests before they’re made can also speed up page loads.

Pi-hole Limitations

Section titled “Pi-hole Limitations”

Pi-hole works at the DNS level (DNS Reddit ELI5). It sees the domain name but not the URL or content, so it can’t distinguish between types of content on the same domain. youtube.com is either blocked entirely or not at all.

Some streaming services serve ads through the same domains as their content. Pi-hole cannot block Hulu or Disney+ ads on their ad-supported plans without breaking the service.

For most other services, you can add service-specific rules to the allowlists when you get to that page, or skip ahead if that’s your main use case.

You can set up a Pi-hole to reduce the advertising noise of the Internet. But if you’re looking for a way to remove the essay before a recipe, this isn’t it.

Why This Guide Exists

Section titled “Why This Guide Exists”

Due to some hardware issues in the past, I’ve had to rebuild this setup several times, collecting steps from around the Internet each time. This guide is a collection of my notes, organized into documentation to help other people set up or rebuild their Pi-hole.

The steps in this guide document how I set up Pi-hole v6 with:

  • Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm)
  • UFW firewall
  • HaGeZi tiered blocklists with supplementary category lists
  • Allowlists for streaming and smart TV platforms
  • Omada controller DHCP configured for network-wide blocking
  • Optional:
    • Teleporter backup for configuration export/restoration
    • Unbound recursive DNS with Cloudflare as fallback
    • Netdata system and Pi-hole monitoring
    • Tailscale for remote admin access and to make the Pi-hole act as a personal VPN
    • More restrictive groups for specific devices

Visit the official Pi-hole documentation for more use cases and details.

This guide is written for Pi-hole v6 as an opinionated copy-and-paste solution that a relative novice can follow from beginning to end or use as a reference.

If you have Pi-hole v5 installed, many of the concepts remain the same in v6. You can still access the older version of this guide on GitHub.

If you identify any errors or areas for improvement, please submit a GitHub issue or select Edit page at the bottom of any page to suggest a change.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  • Access to your router’s configuration.

    • This is required if you want devices on your network to use the Pi-hole.

    • Some routers have a sticker with their admin information. You can also try some common router IPs like 192.168.1.1.

      This is usually your gateway IP.

  • Raspberry Pi
    • You can use another always-on device on your local network or even a VPS and most of the steps in this guide will still work, but it’s outside the scope of this guide and some steps might differ.
  • microSD card, 8 GB or larger, with a way to plug it into your computer.
  • Familiarity with a terminal and the command line, or at least comfort following terminal commands. Most commands in this guide can be copied and pasted, and I try to explain the ones that can’t be.

In This Guide

Section titled “In This Guide”