- When I'm away from home and traveling, if something goes wrong, the Pi-Hole is usually the single source of that error, and is hard to solve by talking to my wife to walkthrough the settings.
- A few websites (India in my case), mostly government ones, do not work when Ads are blocked. Try paying LIC Premium or even login to LIC of India with your DNS modified, Ads Blocked!
- Wife want ads in some of her apps, "What did you do to my Ads!"
Since then, the family was on NextDNS[2] for almost two years - premium member hitting million+ request a month from a 4-member family. With NextDNS slow to update when macOS changes the way they deal with Private Relay, I stumbled on AdGuard's DNS[3] (in beta now). I already bought the lifetime (family) AdGuard license sometime back. So, I tried it and am on it now.
With the current setup, the last-mile choices of blocking ads or not blocking (for some website) is at the client (wife, daughter, and other devices). This works good so far -- everyone have a choice without being totally locked down. I have also taught my 13-year old daughter to keep a watch on Little Snitch.
Here is the typical settings for all of the devices in our family, which works well when inside the home or outside.
Apple's Private Relay (ON) > AdGuard with DNS Routing (OFF/ON) > (Optional VPN when needed) > Balanced/Bonded common ROUTER with minimal locked down settings > All of the ISP's entry routers.
Nonetheless, I've been meaning to tinker so I can have Pi-Hole sitting between our family and the Internet but optionally circumventable easily -- perhaps a big Amber Button which even my 5-year old can press and go into the Internet momentarily.
Edit: I forgot to add my thinking/concept/philosophy in all of this -- We should be able to walk out from most entrapments/situations/entities with minimal or no change needed.
1. https://brajeshwar.com/2019/pi-hole-blocking-ads-at-home/