Set Up Pi-hole at Home in 30 Minutes

Network-wide ad and tracker blocking on a $35 Raspberry Pi. Step-by-step from blank SD card to ad-free smart TV in half an hour.

1. STEP 1

   Hardware

   Pi 4 with 2GB RAM is overkill. Pi 3B+ works. Pi Zero 2 W works for a small household. Add an SD card (8GB+) and a power supply.

2. STEP 2

   Flash the SD card

   Use Raspberry Pi Imager. Pick Raspberry Pi OS Lite (no desktop). In the gear icon, set hostname (pihole.local), enable SSH, set Wi-Fi, set a strong user password. Saves you a monitor + keyboard step.

3. STEP 3

   Boot and SSH in

   Insert SD card, plug in power, wait 60 seconds. From your laptop: ssh [email protected]. Run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y to get current.

4. STEP 4

   Install Pi-hole

   One-line installer: curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash. Follow the wizard. When asked for upstream DNS, pick Quad9 (9.9.9.9) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1). Default block lists are fine for a start. The wizard prints your admin password — save it.

5. STEP 5

   Point your network at it

   Two options. (a) Edit your router's DHCP settings to hand out the Pi's IP as the DNS server — this catches every device on the LAN. (b) Set the Pi's IP as DNS only on devices you want to filter. Option (a) is the right one if your router supports it.

6. STEP 6

   Test and tune

   Visit pihole.net/test or just open YouTube on a TV. The admin dashboard at http://pihole.local/admin shows queries, blocks, and stats. Add lists from firebog.net for stronger filtering. Whitelist anything that breaks.