Pi-hole: The Handy Little Ad Blocker

Pi-hole is a handy little program with a clean web-based GUI, designed to block ads using a Raspberry Pi.

Setting it up is one of those beginner-friendly projects that just about anyone can do. I didn’t even need a YouTube tutorial — I just asked ChatGPT, and it gave me a simple step-by-step guide.

A quick curl command and some DNS configuration on the devices I wanted to protect, and bam — the ad blocker was up and running. I added all of my devices, along with my siblings’, to a Default Group, and created a separate Testing group for experimenting with new blocklists or settings on specific devices.

The only hiccup I ran into was with YouTube — occasionally, ads would still sneak through. However, they’d usually disappear after clicking on a few videos in quick succession. That’s because YouTube serves ads from the same domain as the videos themselves: googlevideo.com. Blocking that domain would stop the ads and break video playback, so it’s not really a viable solution. I could always use a browser-based ad blocker, but honestly, I don’t mind letting YouTube make a little money.

All in all, this was a super easy and satisfying project. I’d definitely recommend it as a great starting point for anyone new to the Raspberry Pi.