Can you outline how you're doing system-wide as blocking? That's news to me!
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.
3) this can also be done on iOS.
3) Cool.
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).
One issue is that it cannot work when using another VPN.
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.
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.
I recommend NextDNS as a hosted, paid, custom DNS provider.
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.
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.
Are there any advantages to paying a monthly fee to do this when it can be easily done from inside your LAN?
If you're rooted, you can just modify your hosts file manually or use something like adaway to do it for you.
Thank you!