The release of Pi-Hole 6 has been announced, introducing a system for centralized ad blocking on local networks without the need to install browser extensions or ad blockers on individual devices. This new scheme is designed to combat ads on devices within home networks such as smart TVs, gaming consoles, and smartphones, including blocking ads within mobile applications. Pi-Hole operates at the DNS level, redirecting data domains to 0.0.0.0. The project is distributed under the EUPL 1.2 license.
To install Pi-Hole, users can simply run the Shell script which automates the installation process on various platforms including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Raspberry Pi OS (Raspbian), Armbian, and Centos Stream for different architectures. Pi-Hole is also compatible with single-board computers like Raspberry Pi and offers a container image for easy deployment.
Pi-Hole utilizes DHCP and DNS servers based on an updated version of dnsmasq to manage DNS settings and statistics collection. The background process FTLDNS (pihole-ftl) is responsible for gathering data on blocked and requested domains, advertising networks, damaged DNS pages, and customer traffic. Statistics are stored using sqlite.
In addition to the command-line interface, Pi-Hole offers a web interface based on AdminLTE code to monitor and control ad blocking. The web interface is responsive and provides access to detailed logs, summary data, visualizations, history tracking, whitelist and blacklist management, regular expression blocking, and DHCP settings.