Show HN: HostBlock – A menu bar app that blocks ads and malware (for my grandma)

I'm the family IT person and I wanted a simple way to block ads and malware on my non-technical family member's computers. I already have uBlock origin installed on most of their browsers, but that only covers the one surface.

So I built HostBlock which is a macOS menu bar app that lets you subscribe to domain blocklists and have it update /etc/hosts to locally block those domains system-wide. Lists are automatically refetched every 24h.

Free for personal use on one device, and Pro for unlimited devices with a single license key.

I used StevenBlack's hosts as the default lists which give good coverage and are actively updated. You can also easily add your own custom blocklists via a Github gist.

Using hosts is limited given the lack of wildcard domain support, but still pretty happy with how it turned out!