Pi-hole
FreeOne device, and every screen in the house loses its ads
A network-level ad blocker that runs as your LAN's DNS server. Once devices point their DNS at it, ad and tracker domains are blocked at resolution time — ads inside phone apps, on smart TVs and tracking calls from game consoles all disappear, with no extension to install per device.
Why we picked it
A browser extension only covers the browser. Banner ads inside phone apps, promoted tiles on a smart TV's home screen, telemetry quietly sent home by assorted devices — an extension catches none of it. Pi-hole attacks the problem from a different layer: it sits at DNS, so when a device tries to reach an ad server it must ask for the domain first, and Pi-hole simply answers that there is no such address.
The effect is house-wide. Deploy once and everything on the Wi-Fi benefits, including devices that would never let you install software. 60,356 stars, EUPL-licensed.
It also ships a surprisingly informative dashboard: how many requests each device made, which domains dominate, what share was blocked. First-time users are usually startled — you tend to discover one device quietly making thousands of requests a day.
Setup is easier than expected. The classic host is a Raspberry Pi (hence the name), but any always-on Linux machine or a Docker container on a NAS works, and the official install script handles the rest. Point your router's DHCP settings at its address and the whole household is covered.
Three limits to know:
- It blocks domains, not content. Ads served from the same domain as the content — YouTube's in-video ads, for instance — get through; those still need uBlock Origin in the browser. The two are complementary and many people run both.
- False positives happen. An app's images or a redirect can get blocked, showing up as "won't load". The dashboard lists recently blocked domains with one-click whitelisting; start there when something breaks.
- It becomes a single point of failure. If that machine goes down, nothing on the network resolves DNS and the internet appears dead. Configure a fallback DNS on the router, or run two instances.