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Comment by Justsignedup | Hacker News Reader

I do use adblockers, so much so that I basically only use android because of all the system-wide adblocking capabilities, including youtube ads.

I occasionally switch off adblockers to see what the rest of the world sees. Within seconds I am shocked every single time. Some sites I use are unusable without adblockers. The youtube experience is attrocious without adblockers. Amazon products are impossible to find without being flooded with sponsored products. Google results are ads until pages later.

Its like a whole other internet. I cannot imagine how small of a portion of the internet I'd need to use if I could not use adblockers.

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Can you outline how you're doing system-wide as blocking? That's news to me!

I don't know about the OP but pi-hole gives you amazing url-based ad blocking that works for all your connected devices!

Unless rooted, you're basically relegated to two options. 1. You can set your dns to a custom dns (adguard's dns is commonly used) to block ads systemwide. 2. You can use a vpn proxy style adblocker via Blockada, Adaway, or Adguard.

If you're rooted, you can just modify your hosts file manually or use something like adaway to do it for you.

Ah yes, they are likely running at rooted device. I didn't even think of that.

Thank you!

Custom DNS has been available for years in Android and doesnt require root or any additional apps.

I think adguard works by running a local VPN on your phone. This way it can filter unencrypted connections while integrating properly in Android. Can also filter HTTPS by installing an (app-generated I assume) root certificate but I don't feel very good about doing that.

One issue is that it cannot work when using another VPN.

I'm using unlock on Firefox on android, it blocks ads on YouTube. Genuine question, what would ad guard do that is better?

AdGuard as the DNS for your router + Tailscale blocks trackers and ads on all your devices in all apps, not just browsers with ad block installed. Mobile games, embedded WebViews, etc. If you are an iOS user that hates safari, you can use Firefox without ads. Something like 30 percent of what it blocks in my logs comes from trackers being blocked on my Roku and Android TV. With Tailscale it will also block ads when you are mobile.

The one caveat is that it does not block ads served natively, so you will still need a specialized app for native YouTube, Instagram, and others, but those are readily available now.

Without HTTPS filtering, I would believe uBlock Origin to be better as it should be able to operate on secure connections. But it's limited to the browser.

On my side I use both: AdGuard on the system side to help with apps and Chrome, and uBlock Origin in Firefox for HTTPS or when another VPN is being used.

Note: for applications/services, buying the no-ad option or using an open-source application from F-Droid is the better way when possible. Even when doing so, AdGuard can be helpful for in-app web browsers that don't have ad blockers.

Pi-Hole + VPN usually works without issue for me.

This is the way.

I have a PiHole running in EC2 and I just VPN into it. The VPN is configured so that only DNS goes through it, so I don't tunnel all my traffic through it and pay for lots of egress.

Could easily run the VPN through something local, of course, but I prefer to expose as little as possible on my home network.

How expensive is this?

Not my solution, but a t2.micro is probably $7/mo.

~$7.20/month for a t3.micro instance + $1.60/month for 20 GB of block storage, plus a penny or two for the bandwidth usage.

But you could do it cheaper than that. A t3.nano is ~$3.60/month and could easily handle running the PiHole, and you could probably get away with only 10 GB of block storage, possibly even less. I choose to use a t3.micro and 20 gig because I do other stuff with my instance.

Thanks

That's not exactly unique to Android, though ...

I've seen posts about running pihole on an rpi or ubuntu.

Are there any advantages to paying a monthly fee to do this when it can be easily done from inside your LAN?

Some folks dislike exposing parts (or any) part of their internal network.

DNS blocklists via VPN and modded android apps for things like YouTube video ads (which can't be blocked via dns)

Both android and iOS natively let you set a custom DNS server and there are several that include adblocking (or you can host your own). It's not as good as application level blocking but it's quite effective.

I recommend NextDNS as a hosted, paid, custom DNS provider.

I moved away from NextDNS due to how slowly it picked up DNS changes, it would take hours for changes to propagate - and there wasn't any way to force it to update without manually creating DNS entries. I installed PiHole on one of my servers and Tailscale makes it available on all my devices - I couldn't be happier.

How's the latency with pihole over tailscale? I have a feeling it would make a noticeable difference for me

I haven't had any issues with latency personally.

There's a few notable differences between android and iOS as far as adblocking is concerned:

1) Android lets you install other browsers and use them as default. Some of these, like Firefox or Brave or Vivaldi, include adblocking software that works everywhere, even YouTube. Whereas on iOS, even if you install chrome, it's just a reskinned safari because Apple refuses third parties proper access to the system. https://www.howtogeek.com/184283/why-third-party-browsers-wi...

2) Android allows you root access without too much trouble, and you can install system wide ad blocking tools that way. Such as AdLock.

3) There are other system wide blocking options, such as anti-ad VPN solutions, that works on system wide data traffic.

AdAway on F-Droid is FOSS and works with or without root, big fan of that one.

Without root it consumes more battery. Using DNS adblocking is more efficient. Like NextDNS or pi-hole.

1) iOS let’s let’s you use a different browser as default. Safari also allows extensions which provide excellent adblocking.

3) this can also be done on iOS.

1) No it doesn't. Any other browser on iOS is just a reskinned safari, because Apple doesn't allow other render engines.

3) Cool.

You can use NextDNS on any internet connected device and enable ad-blocking on all connections for the whole device. Works great on MacOS and iPhone and it's easy to setup.

## If you are rooted:

Install AdAway and use the root method; this will modify the system hosts file and redirect the requests to domains that are used to serve ads to 127.0.0.1.

Some apps refuse to function if they can't fetch ads, so AdAway has a webserver that listens on 127.0.0.1 that serves a blank webpage to those apps. Follow the directions in AdAway to install the CA certificate in your device.

## If you aren't rooted:

Go to Settings and search "Private DNS", set this to dns.adguard.com, this is AdGuard's DNS, and it blocks requests to ad sites (not sure how, but it may not return an IP address or return a bogus one). This method will work on any device as long as you can change the DNS that the device uses (including iPhones).

I just changed the DNS on my unrooted Android to AdGuard's, went into the YouTube and I still saw the ads. What am I missing?

You need NewPipe for unbloated, distraction free YouTube on Android.

Or you could also install the Fennec browser, install the ublock extension, go to the desktop version of youtube and click on the install PWA button to install the mobile youtube PWA, which will be affected by ublock.

That's just a shortcut to youtube.com on Firefox/Fennec, ReVanced (revanced(dot)app) is a much better solution.

Yeah but I really don't want to install any GMS-related stuff on my phone, not even microg, I don't want to have services hanging in the background wasting RAM just because I sometimes watch YouTube :)

Fair

The DNS can't block YouTube ads because then the whole of YouTube would be blocked. You should use ReVanced instead for this. (Or uBlock Origin in Firefox)

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