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Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi — Block ads across your whole network

Complete guide to installing Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi and blocking ads and trackers for every device on your local network through DNS.

Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi — Block ads across your whole network Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi — Block ads across your whole network
Table of Contents

Pi-hole is a DNS-level ad blocker that protects your entire network — phones, smart TVs, consoles, computers — without installing anything on each device.

How it works

Device (phone, PC, TV...)
       │ DNS query: ad.example.com
       ▼
Pi-hole (local DNS server)
       │ Blocklist: ad.example.com → BLOCKED → 0.0.0.0
       │ Legitimate domain → forwarded to 1.1.1.1
       ▼
Internet (legitimate domains only)

Pi-hole answers 0.0.0.0 for advertising domains — the device never loads the content.

Hardware

  • Raspberry Pi (Zero 2W, 3B+, 4 or 5)
  • microSD card ≥ 8 GB (class 10)
  • Micro-USB or USB-C power supply depending on the model
  • Ethernet connection (recommended) or Wi-Fi
Which model?

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W (~€18) is more than enough for Pi-hole on a home network. The Pi 4 is oversized for this job but lets you host other services at the same time.

Installing Raspberry Pi OS

1. Download Raspberry Pi Imager

2. In the imager, click the ⚙️ icon before flashing to preconfigure:

  • Enable SSH
  • Set up your Wi-Fi (SSID + password)
  • Set a hostname (e.g. pihole)
  • Set a username/password

3. Flash the SD card with Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit)

4. Insert the card and boot the Pi. Connect over SSH:

ssh pi@pihole.local
# or ssh pi@PI_IP_ADDRESS

Assigning a static IP

Pi-hole must always keep the same IP to act as a DNS server:

# Option 1: DHCP reservation on your router (recommended)
# Find the Pi's MAC address in your router's interface
# and create a DHCP reservation

# Option 2: static IP on the Pi
sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf

# Add at the end:
interface eth0
static ip_address=192.168.1.100/24
static routers=192.168.1.1
static domain_name_servers=127.0.0.1

Installing Pi-hole

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

The interactive installer walks you through:

  1. Network interface: eth0 (cable) or wlan0 (Wi-Fi)
  2. Upstream DNS: pick your forwarder (Cloudflare, Quad9, etc.)
  3. Static IP confirmation: confirm your IP
  4. Web interface: enable it

At the end, write down the generated admin password.

Admin password

If you miss the password, you can change it at any time with: pihole -a -p new-password

Post-installation setup

Opening the web interface

Open http://192.168.1.100/admin in your browser.

Updating the blocklists

pihole -g

Adding more lists

In the interface: Group Management → Adlists, add:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PolishFiltersTeam/KADhosts/master/KADhosts.txt
https://adaway.org/hosts.txt

Then: Tools → Update Gravity to download the lists.

Making your router hand out Pi-hole as DNS

This is the key step: every device on the network must use Pi-hole as its DNS server.

In your router’s interface:

  • DHCP settings → primary DNS: 192.168.1.100 (the Pi’s IP)
  • Secondary DNS: leave empty or set 1.1.1.1 (fallback if Pi-hole goes down)

On some routers, devices must be restarted to pick up the new DNS.

Typical results

After a few hours of operation:

Metric Typical value
Blocked queries 20-35%
Domains on the blocklist 150,000 - 300,000
Added DNS latency < 1 ms on the LAN
RAM used (Pi Zero 2W) ~80 MB

Useful commands

# Pi-hole status
pihole status

# Watch queries in real time
pihole -t

# Update Pi-hole
pihole -up

# Disable temporarily (300 seconds)
pihole disable 300
pihole enable

# Whitelist a domain
pihole -w domain.com

# Blacklist a domain manually
pihole -b ad-domain.com

# Quick stats
pihole -c

Common troubleshooting

A site is blocked by mistake

# Search the logs
pihole -t | grep "site-name.com"

# Whitelist it
pihole -w site-name.com

Devices don’t use Pi-hole

# Check which DNS a device uses (from that device)
# Windows:
nslookup google.com
# → Server: must show the Pi-hole IP

# Linux/Mac:
dig google.com | grep SERVER

PS C:\\>$ nslookup google.com
Server:  192.168.1.100
The Server line must show the Pi-hole IP

Pi-hole doesn’t answer

# Check the service
sudo systemctl status pihole-FTL

# Restart if needed
sudo systemctl restart pihole-FTL

In my homelab

On my Raspberry Pi, Pi-hole runs as a Docker container alongside vlmcsd (KMS server) on the same machine:

services:
  pihole:
    image: pihole/pihole:latest
    container_name: pihole
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "53:53/tcp"
      - "53:53/udp"
      - "80:80/tcp"
    environment:
      TZ: Europe/Paris
      WEBPASSWORD: your-password
      PIHOLE_DNS_: 94.140.14.14;1.1.1.1
    volumes:
      - ./etc-pihole:/etc/pihole
      - ./etc-dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d

  vlmcsd:
    image: mikolatero/vlmcsd:latest
    container_name: vlmcsd
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "1688:1688"
Result

On my network, Pi-hole blocks 28% of DNS queries on average — mostly advertising, trackers and Windows and Android telemetry.

Conclusion

Pi-hole is one of the homelab projects with the best effort-to-result ratio. Once installed, it works transparently for every device on the network, with no client-side configuration at all.

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