You’re probably tired of seeing those massive banner ads for products you just looked at on Amazon. It feels like every website is basically a digital minefield. You click one thing, and three trackers start reporting your behavior back to some server in a basement across the globe. Honestly, the modern internet is kind of a mess.
That’s where setting up Pi-hole comes in.
It is essentially a DNS sinkhole. It sits on your network and acts as a bouncer. When a device—whether it's your smart TV, your phone, or your laptop—tries to reach out to a known advertising server or a tracking domain, Pi-hole just says "no." It returns a null response, and the ad never even loads. Because it happens at the network level, you don't even need to install an ad-blocker on every single device you own. It just works.
Why You Actually Need This (It's Not Just About Ads)
Most people think of Pi-hole as a simple ad blocker. It’s more than that. It’s a privacy tool. Think about your "smart" fridge or that cheap Wi-Fi lightbulb you bought on sale. Those things are notoriously chatty. They constantly ping home to manufacturers, often sending telemetry data you never explicitly agreed to share.
When you get around to setting up Pi-hole, you start seeing the "Top Permitted Domains" and "Top Blocked Domains" in your dashboard. It is genuinely eye-opening. You’ll see your Samsung TV trying to reach out to logging servers every few seconds. You’ll see your phone’s apps trying to check in with trackers even when the screen is off.
It also speeds things up. Seriously. Ads are heavy. They take up bandwidth. By blocking them before they even download, your pages feel snappier. You’re not wasting bits on a video ad for a car you aren't going to buy.
The Hardware: What Do You Actually Need?
You don't need a beefy server. That's the beauty of it. The software is incredibly lightweight. Most people use a Raspberry Pi, which is where the name comes from.
A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is plenty. A Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 is actually overkill, but if you have one lying in a drawer gathering dust, use it. You can even run this in a Docker container on a Synology NAS or a Linux VM if you're into that sort of thing.
What you’ll need for a physical build:
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- A Raspberry Pi (Zero, 3, 4, or 5).
- A high-quality microSD card (at least 16GB). Don't buy the cheapest one; they fail.
- A reliable power supply. Under-voltage is the number one cause of Pi crashes.
- An Ethernet cable. Seriously, use a wired connection if you can. Wi-Fi works, but DNS is the heartbeat of your network. You want it to be rock solid and low latency.
The First Step: Preparing the OS
You need an operating system. Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) is the standard choice. Download the "Raspberry Pi Imager" from the official site. It’s the easiest way to flash the OS onto your SD card.
Choose the "Lite" version of the OS. You don't need a desktop environment or a GUI. You're going to manage this through a web browser or a terminal. Once you select the OS and the SD card, click the little gear icon for "Advanced Options."
Enable SSH. Set a username and password. Configure your Wi-Fi if you aren't using Ethernet. This saves you from having to plug a monitor and keyboard into the Pi later. Just flash it, pop it in the Pi, and power it up.
The Magic Command: Installing the Software
Once your Pi is booted and you’ve figured out its IP address (check your router’s client list), open your terminal. On Mac or Linux, use ssh username@ipaddress. On Windows, use PowerShell or Putty.
Once you’re in, run the following command:
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
This is the automated installer. It’s very friendly. It will walk you through a series of blue-and-grey screens. It’ll ask which interface you want to use (Ethernet or Wi-Fi). It’ll ask which DNS provider you want to use as your upstream. Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and Google (8.8.8.8) are popular, but Quad9 is great for extra security.
Pro tip: Give your Pi a static IP address. The installer will ask if you want to set the current IP as static. Say yes. If your router reassigns a different IP to the Pi later, your entire internet will "break" because your devices will be looking for a DNS server that isn't there.
Configuring Your Router (The "Make it Work" Step)
This is where most people get tripped up. Setting up Pi-hole on the device is easy; telling your network to use it is the tricky part.
You have two choices here.
First choice: Log into your router’s web interface. Look for "DHCP Settings" or "LAN Settings." Find the field for "DNS Server." Change it from the default (usually your ISP's IP) to the static IP address of your Raspberry Pi.
Now, every device that connects to your Wi-Fi will automatically be told: "Hey, use this Pi-hole for DNS."
Second choice: If your router is a cheap ISP-provided puck that won't let you change DNS settings, don't worry. You can disable the DHCP server on your router and enable the DHCP server on the Pi-hole itself. There’s a tab for this in the Pi-hole settings. This makes the Pi-hole the "boss" of assigning IP addresses to everything in your house. It works like a charm.
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Dealing with the "Broken Website" Problem
Occasionally, Pi-hole is too good at its job. You might try to click a sponsored link on Google Search and find that it won't load. That’s because googleadservices.com is blocked.
This is where the "Whitelist" comes in.
You access the Pi-hole dashboard by typing http://pi.hole/admin or http://[your-pi-ip]/admin into your browser. The interface is clean. You can see real-time queries. If something isn't working, check the "Query Log." Look for the red entries. If you see a domain that you actually need, just click the "Whitelist" button next to it.
It’s a balancing act. You start with the default "StevenBlack" list, which is excellent. It blocks about 150,000 domains out of the box. You can add more lists from sites like Firebog, but be careful. If you add too many, you'll spend your whole Saturday afternoon whitelisting sites just so your spouse can check their email.
Beyond Simple Blocking: Unbound and Privacy
If you want to go full "tinfoil hat" (in a good way), you should look into Unbound.
Normally, Pi-hole blocks the bad stuff but still has to ask an upstream provider like Google or Cloudflare: "Hey, where is twitter.com?" This means Google still knows what sites you are visiting, even if they can't show you ads.
By installing Unbound alongside Pi-hole, your Pi becomes its own recursive DNS server. It contacts the Root Servers directly. It’s slower for the first few seconds while it builds a cache, but it means no single entity is tracking your DNS history. It’s the ultimate privacy setup for a home network.
Common Misconceptions and Pitfalls
Let's be real for a second. Pi-hole cannot block YouTube ads in the way it used to.
YouTube serves ads from the same domains as the actual video content. If you block the ad domain, you block the video. To get rid of YouTube ads, you still need browser-based extensions like uBlock Origin or a specialized app like SmartTubeNext for TVs.
Also, Pi-hole won't help you much if you're using a VPN on your computer. Most VPNs force their own DNS to prevent leaks. If your VPN is on, it bypasses the Pi-hole. You’ll have to decide which you value more at that moment: the encrypted tunnel of the VPN or the ad-blocking of the Pi-hole.
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Keeping Everything Alive
Once you're done setting up Pi-hole, you can't just forget it forever. It's a Linux machine. It needs updates.
Every couple of weeks, SSH into your Pi and run:pihole -up
This updates the Pi-hole core, the web interface, and the FTL engine. Also, remember to run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade to keep the underlying OS secure.
SD cards do die. They have a limited number of "writes." Since Pi-hole writes logs constantly, it can wear out a card in a year or two. You can mitigate this by using "Log2Ram," a little script that moves the logs to your RAM instead of writing to the SD card constantly. Or, just keep a backup of your SD card image so you can swap a new one in five minutes.
Actionable Next Steps
If you’re ready to take back your privacy, here is your path forward. Stop overthinking the hardware; go find any old computer or a cheap Raspberry Pi. Download the Raspberry Pi Imager and get the Lite OS flashed.
Once the installer is running, stick to the defaults. They are defaults for a reason. Don't go crazy adding every blocklist you find on Reddit on day one. Start with the basics, get your router pointed at the Pi, and watch the "Percent Blocked" graph start to climb. Usually, you'll see about 15% to 25% of your total network traffic is just garbage that didn't need to be there in the first place.
Check your dashboard after 24 hours. You'll be surprised—and probably a little annoyed—at just how much your "smart" devices are talking behind your back. Whitelist what you must, block what you can, and enjoy a significantly cleaner version of the internet.