I’m talking full phone and blocking. Not just browser.
Edit: So many options! Thanks guys I’ll go through them all and see what one I think will work best for me. I appreciate it.
Pihole on the home network and my phone has constant VPN connection to the home network via Wireguard.
Out of curiosity, you have to open a port in the router for that to work, right? How does that work in the security aspect? Do you need to do some constant maintenance in your setup or something in order not to be vulnerable?
While you have to open a port for wireguard, it doesnt respond to anything other than your clients with a key. It should be safe enough without any maintenance, but security updates are always a good idea. If you don’t want to open port there are alternatives like tailscale or zerotier, but I have never tried them
How much battery do you think this consumes? I’ve always thought an always on VPN set up but never tried it as I assumed it would drain the battery too quickly.
I have the same configuration running on all my devices, my kids and my wife’s too, it’s wonderful.
You want a DNS based adblocker. I like nextdns because I can customise it.
If you mean blocking specific websites, then yes. It’s in the parental control section
Nice. I use Mullvad DNS for the same purpose.
They seem to have many different endpoints depending on what you want to block, which is customizable only down to the type of content. Ads, trackers, malware, adult content, gambling, social media.
If I understand it properly, they have 64 different endpoints for their DNS. But I’m not sure if all of these are publicly facing or if you have to be connected via their VPN service for all of them to be accessible.
That is true but then it applies to everything and you can’t pick and choose which app to filter and which not (I exclude banking app for example), what level of filtering you want for each app (my phone is not rooted so there are some apps which will reject https filtering), and additionally I can quickly turn off and on filtering in the app for example when there’s a need for troubleshooting why something is not loading etc. In short, with an app you have more control and access to stats:
Doesn’t that require root? Or am I getting it confused with another solution with “ad” in the title? :/
The one you are thinking is Adaway which makes changes to the system host file.
AdGuard creates a local VPN connection and lets all traffic run through that blocking based on filters. Your VPN slot is taken up here.
NextDNS just changes your phone DNS to its servers and blocks based on filters. Here, your VPN slot is essentially free for use with actual VPN apps.
Your VPN slot is taken up here.
Oof, yeah, that wouldn’t work for me anyway since I currently use a VPN. Lol.
Thanks for clearing it up though! :)
NextDNS just changes your phone DNS to its servers and blocks based on filters. Here, your VPN slot is essentially free for use with actual VPN apps.
That sounds promising! :D
My personal favorite is RethinkDNS, which is technically capable of running your favorite VPN provider alongside blocking ads and blocking/logging domains on a per-app basis.
It’s a bit frustrating to set up for my taste, but it definitely works. (Kudos to Mozilla for sponsoring their project, BTW.)
