Pi-hole Setup Guide: Block Ads for Your Entire Network

Pi-hole intercepts DNS queries from every device on your network and blocks requests to ad-serving and tracking domains. Your TV, phone, laptop and smart speaker all benefit without any app installs.

Install on Docker

version: "3"
services:
  pihole:
    image: pihole/pihole:latest
    container_name: pihole
    ports:
      - "53:53/tcp"
      - "53:53/udp"
      - "80:80/tcp"
    environment:
      TZ: 'Europe/London'
      WEBPASSWORD: 'changeme'
    volumes:
      - './etc-pihole:/etc/pihole'
      - './etc-dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d'
    restart: unless-stopped

Run docker compose up -d. Access the admin panel at http://your-server-ip/admin.

Point Your Router at Pi-hole

Log into your router. Find the DHCP settings and set the Primary DNS to your Pi-hole's IP address. Leave Secondary DNS blank — if you set Google as a fallback, blocked domains will resolve through Google when Pi-hole is unreachable.

Block Lists Worth Using

In Pi-hole, go to Adlists and add these URLs:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
https://big.oisd.nl
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists/main/adblock/multi.txt

After adding, run Tools > Update Gravity to pull the lists. The combined count lands around 1.5–2 million blocked domains.

Whitelisting You'll Actually Need

Some services break when Pi-hole blocks their telemetry endpoints. Common things to whitelist:

• s.youtube.com — YouTube history tracking; blocks break certain video features
• clients1.google.com — Chrome update checks
• *amazon.com patterns — shopping cart features on some pages

Pi-hole logs every query, so blocked services are easy to identify: check the query log, find the blocked domain, whitelist if needed.

Upstream DNS

Under Settings > DNS, choose your upstream resolver. Options:

• Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 — fast, privacy-focused
• Quad9 9.9.9.9 — blocks malware domains upstream, extra layer
• Your ISP DNS — usually slowest and least private
• Unbound (self-hosted) — resolves directly from root servers, no upstream dependency

I run Unbound in a second Docker container alongside Pi-hole and point Pi-hole at it.

Hardware

A Raspberry Pi 4 2GB runs Pi-hole and handles a household DNS load with CPU to spare. Give it a static IP and a UPS so DNS stays up when the power flickers.

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