To install a Pi-hole in your network, you’ll need to do the following things:

For the initial SD card setup, you will need:

To begin, follow the Getting Started documentation to set up your Raspberry Pi. For your operating system, choose Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32-bit) to run headless (without a mouse and keyboard).

During the OS customisation stage, edit settings as follows:

Open a terminal on your computer. If you use a Windows computer, you may need to install a terminal; we suggest PuTTY. Enter the following command to connect to your Raspberry Pi, replacing the <username> placeholder with your own username that you chose in Imager:

$ ssh <username>@pi-hole.local

If ssh asks you if you’re sure you want to continue connecting, reply yes. Enter the password you chose during advanced configuration when prompted.

You’ll know you’ve connected successfully when you see the following prompt with your configured username and hostname:

<username>@<hostname>:~ $

Now that you’ve connected to your Raspberry Pi, run two commands to make sure that all of your packages are up to date:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt full-upgrade

Once the package update commands finish running, reboot your Raspberry Pi to allow all changes to take effect:

$ sudo reboot

Running this command will disconnect you from the Raspberry Pi SSH session. Wait a few seconds for your Raspberry Pi to reboot, and enter the ssh connection command again to reconnect to your device.

Run the following single-line command to run the Pi-hole setup script:

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

The setup script is relatively self-explanatory, but follow these tips if you aren’t sure how to proceed:

When you see “Installation complete!”, the setup is complete. This screen shows the IP address of your Pi-hole, a link to the admin interface, and your administrator password.

Pi-hole only provides a single administrator account, so there’s no username. Press the Control key (Command on macOS) and click the link to the admin interface that uses an IP address. It’ll look something like http://192.168.1.24/admin. Don’t use the pi.hole domain link yet; until we configure the Pi-hole as our DNS provider, it won’t work. The link should open in your browser. You can also copy and paste the link into a browser if control + click doesn’t work in your terminal. Use the admin password from the setup script output to authenticate. You can now see your Pi-hole admin console! We recommend bookmarking this console for future maintenance.

To complete these tasks, visit the admin interface for your router. You can usually access the admin interface through your router’s IP address. Here are a couple of common ways to find that interface:

Once you’ve found the IP address, log in to your router’s admin interface by typing the address (sometimes with the suffix /admin) into your browser. Enter your username and password (if you don’t know these, you may be able to find them on a sticker on your router). Now that you’ve got your Pi-hole configured, you have three choices to use it to block ads. All of them involve getting Pi-hole between your network and the internet:

It’s easiest to use your Pi-hole as a DNS server. However, some routers don’t provide a setting to control the default DNS server. If you can’t set a DNS server, try configuring Pi-hole as your DHCP provider. And if you can’t do that either, you can always manually point devices at the Pi-hole for DNS — it’s not as good as full-network ad blocking, but it’s a lot better than nothing.

This is the most common way of configuring a Pi-hole. For this method, you’ll first assign your Raspberry Pi a static IP address from your router’s interface, then point your router’s DNS server settings to the Pi-hole’s static IP address. With this setup, your router controls IP reservations across your network, but devices on the network send DNS queries to your Pi-hole instead of to a DNS server on the internet.

$ hostname -I

$ 192.168.1.24

$ nmcli -f GENERAL.HWADDR device show wlan0

GENERAL.HWADDR:                         A8:42:EA:58:E0:1C

If your router doesn’t support configuration for static IP addresses or DNS servers, you may still be able to use your Pi-hole automatically across your network. First, check whether you can change the network DHCP server in your router settings. If you can, you can use your Pi-hole both as a DNS server and as the DHCP server that handles IP address reservations across your network.

First, navigate to the Pi-hole admin console. If you type your Raspberry Pi’s IP address into your browser, it should redirect you there.

In the left side menu, select the “Settings” page.

In the DHCP tab, in the “DHCP Settings” block, check the “DHCP server enabled” box.

Pi-hole should pre-populate the IP address range with the IP block that your router currently uses, and the router IP address with the router’s current IP address. You can leave these values as they are. Click the Save button in the bottom left to start hosting a DHCP server from Pi-hole.

Finally, visit your router’s admin interface, and set your Pi-hole’s IP address as the DHCP provider for your network. When your Pi-hole is functioning as the DHCP provider, your router delegates all IP-related tasks to it. This includes DNS server configuration, so your Pi-hole can suggest itself as the default DNS server for all devices on your network. Check the documentation for your router model for specific instructions.

On many devices, you can configure DNS settings in Wi-Fi preferences. Look in the “Advanced” section of your Wi-Fi or wired connection preferences for a DNS server setting. Put your Raspberry Pi’s IP address in this field. Your device should immediately start issuing DNS queries to the Pi-hole.

Unless you’ve configured a static IP address for your Raspberry Pi, this IP address can change at any time without warning. Follow the instructions under “Assign your Raspberry Pi a static IP address” in the DNS section above to configure a static IP address — this will prevent your device from losing its connection to the Pi-hole (and most of the internet!) when your Pi-hole’s dynamic IP address changes.

With a Pi-hole acting as the DNS server for your network, many pages will load without ads at all. Most privacy-invading trackers won’t work either. You’ll still see cookie and app install banners, because those can’t be blocked at the DNS level. To check to see if your Pi-hole is working correctly:

If you’ve completed all of the setup steps but you’re still seeing ads (or, worse, DNS queries don’t resolve), try the trusty solution of turning your router off and on again. This should disconnect all devices from your network and renew all DHCP leases, putting your new settings into effect for every device. Congratulations! Your home network is now protected from ads. Put a slice of bread in your smart toaster, watch a movie on your smart TV, and flush your smart toilet in the comfort of privacy and security. source