dns

AdGuard Home

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A screenshot of the AdGuard Home web interface running as a Home Assistant addon

I’ve recently started using AdGuard Home as a way of blocking advertising and tracking on my iPhone and iPad, when on wifi at home. It works as a replacement DNS server, and re-routes requests to domains known for advertising and traffic to a DNS Sinkhole.

Unlike a browser-based ad blocking extension, such as uBlock Origin or Firefox Focus, by intercepting DNS requests AdGuard Home can stop tracking in all apps. That includes built-in browsers in apps, such as the Facebook app, as well as any app analytics tools. As I have an almost 6 year old 6th generation iPad that is getting rather slow, not having to load additional advertising and tracking scripts has boosted its performance and battery life.

Installing AdGuard

To run AdGuard Home, you’ll need a spare computer that can run all the time. A Raspberry Pi is ideal for this, as it’s small, low energy and can be run without a keyboard and mouse. You can also use Docker, Snap, or do as I do and run it as a Home Assistant addon. Indeed, once it’s set up, Home Assistant will detect it and offer to install an integration.

You can then adjust your router’s DNS settings, so that every device in your home uses your new AdGuard DNS server. This will block adverts and tracking across all of your devices if you want it to. I’ve chosen not to do this; whilst many tracking sites are a privacy nightmare, I also use sites like Quidco to get cashback. I use Google Chrome with no privacy features turned on when making purchases that could be eligible for cashback; this earned me over £80 when we switched our broadband supplier to Vodafone recently.

For me, just having it running on my mobile devices when at home on wifi is enough.

Whilst AdGuard offers other tools that are paid-for, AdGuard Home is free and open source.

Pi-hole

Pi-hole is similar to AdGuard, in that it is also a DNS-based ad blocker. As the name suggests, it was intended for use on Raspberry Pi computers, but can be installed on other devices. I had investigated installing this, but came across AdGuard as an easier alternative. Pi-hole is also open source, but development seems less active.

Advanced features

For the most part, once you’ve installed AdGuard Home and set it as your DNS server, you don’t need to do much else. However, you can enable DNS Encryption if you want – especially if you want to access your AdGuard server from outside the home. You can also use AdGuard Home to block adult content, or access to certain web sites, and configure this for individual devices. So, I could enable parental controls on our eight-year-old’s tablet using AdGuard without restricting my devices.

Lurgified

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Posts here have been a little light of late because both Christine and I have been ill with some kind of bug that isn’t quite ‘flu but stronger than a cold. We both spent most of Tuesday asleep, and although I’ve managed to drag myself to work over the past couple of days I’m still not completely better yet.

In other news:

  • Travelodge saw my post last week and we had a productive chat about my experiences. I have edited the post accordingly, and will therefore withdraw my comments about avoiding them.
  • I updated this site to WordPress 3.3, which went almost flawlessly apart from it not deleting the .maintenance file from the root folder (the existence of this file basically shuts your site down). It’s easily solved though, and I’m liking the update – the new fly-out menus are very welcome and help to declutter the interface. There’s also drag and drop uploading of images, which sounds cool although I’ve yet to try it myself.
  • Now I just need to upgrade the other two blogs on here to 3.3. I’ve considered enabling multi-user mode and just having one install but I’m worried that it’ll be a little too restrictive for my needs.
  • I’ve been experimenting with DNSCrypt, a new tool from OpenDNS which allows you to encrypt your DNS requests in the same way that web pages are encrypted over SSL. It’s a ‘technology preview’ at the moment, with only a Mac client available which is at version 0.7. Unfortunately, when I tried it, it slowed down DNS requests significantly which made pages load more slowly – especially those such as Facebook where images are hosted on cloud servers on different subdomains. The client is also a bit of a pain to uninstall. It’s promising but I’d wait for version 1.0 if I were you.
  • Christine and I have booked tickets to see the mighty Alestorm next year. After seeing Within Temptation last month (who are amazing live – if you like that kind of music, get tickets if you can), and Alestorm next year, I’ll have seen 3 of my 4 favourite bands live. Just need to see Nightwish now, although they haven’t announced any UK dates for their next tour unfortunately.