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Can you actually use PiHole to serve DNS for your Android? I was able to direct my Linux systems to my PiHole but my Android phone seemed to not care a wit abou

Can you actually use PiHole to serve DNS for your Android? I was able to direct my Linux systems to my PiHole but my Android phone seemed to not care a wit about my internal DNS.

hansvm 5y ago
Yes, absolutely. A few apps (notably chrome) use secure dns by default, and given the state of that ecosystem they default to their own provider. You'll need to set up secure dns on your pihole and tell chrome to use that provider (or disable it in chrome).
- city41 5y ago
  I have secure dns on my pi hole, but on my Android phone I did nothing at all. Just use it as-is, and when I'm on my home wifi all ads get blocked.
  - hansvm 5y ago
    If I'm understanding their desired goal correctly they'd like to get that kind of DNS-level blocking everywhere, not just on their home wifi. I know I appreciate having those nuisances blocked remotely -- some apps don't even run with poor cell service for me without DNS-level blocking because of all the extra data they're trying to transfer.
driverdan 5y ago
Yes. Set it as the DNS server to use in your router.
Guest19023892 5y ago
I setup a Pi-hole yesterday with two Android phones (manually setting the DNS on each device at the moment until I'm sure there are no issues and I want to set it at the router level for all devices on the network). Both phones worked as expected. One is a Pixel 4a with Chrome as the browser and I didn't experience any issues or have to do anything special during setup.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
I've solved this problem by hosting a VPN server behind the network-wide PiHole DNS, and I have my Android phone connected to the VPN whilst on mobile data. (I haven't yet worked out how to automate connection to VPN once out of range of my home wi-fi, or disconnection when in range, but doing it manually isn't much hassle). I also have a cloud-hosted PiHole instance (planned as a service to friends and family), but that's still a work in progress that I'd actually semi-forgotten about...

Can you actually use PiHole to serve DNS for your Android? I was able to direct my Linux systems to my PiHole but my Android phone seemed to not care a wit about my internal DNS.

hansvm 5y ago

Yes, absolutely. A few apps (notably chrome) use secure dns by default, and given the state of that ecosystem they default to their own provider. You'll need to set up secure dns on your pihole and tell chrome to use that provider (or disable it in chrome).

city41 5y ago
I have secure dns on my pi hole, but on my Android phone I did nothing at all. Just use it as-is, and when I'm on my home wifi all ads get blocked.
- hansvm 5y ago
  If I'm understanding their desired goal correctly they'd like to get that kind of DNS-level blocking everywhere, not just on their home wifi. I know I appreciate having those nuisances blocked remotely -- some apps don't even run with poor cell service for me without DNS-level blocking because of all the extra data they're trying to transfer.

driverdan 5y ago

Yes. Set it as the DNS server to use in your router.

Guest19023892 5y ago

I setup a Pi-hole yesterday with two Android phones (manually setting the DNS on each device at the moment until I'm sure there are no issues and I want to set it at the router level for all devices on the network). Both phones worked as expected. One is a Pixel 4a with Chrome as the browser and I didn't experience any issues or have to do anything special during setup.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago

I've solved this problem by hosting a VPN server behind the network-wide PiHole DNS, and I have my Android phone connected to the VPN whilst on mobile data. (I haven't yet worked out how to automate connection to VPN once out of range of my home wi-fi, or disconnection when in range, but doing it manually isn't much hassle). I also have a cloud-hosted PiHole instance (planned as a service to friends and family), but that's still a work in progress that I'd actually semi-forgotten about...