Pi-hole: Block Ads on Your Entire Network for Free

You know those ads that follow you around the internet? The ones that show up on your phone, your tablet, your smart TV, and somehow even your kid’s iPad? There’s a way to block all of them, on every device in your home, without installing anything on each device.

It’s called Pi-hole, and it’s one of the coolest things running on the same Raspberry Pi that powers your Home Assistant hub.

What Pi-hole Does

Pi-hole is a network-level ad blocker. Instead of installing ad blockers on each individual device (which doesn’t even work on most smart TVs and phones apps), Pi-hole blocks ads at the DNS level for your entire network.

Every device connected to your home Wi-Fi — phones, laptops, tablets, smart TVs, gaming consoles, even IoT devices — gets ad blocking automatically. No configuration on each device. No apps to install. It just works.

How It Works (Simple Version)

When you type a website address or open an app, your device needs to look up the server’s address. This is called a DNS query. Normally, your router forwards this request to your internet provider’s DNS server.

Pi-hole sits between your devices and the internet. When a device tries to load content from a known ad server, tracker, or malware domain, Pi-hole simply blocks the request. The ad never loads. The tracker never fires. The page loads faster because it’s not waiting for ad content.

Your regular content loads normally. Only the junk gets blocked.

What Gets Blocked

Pi-hole maintains blocklists of known advertising and tracking domains. Out of the box, it blocks:

• Display ads — banner ads, pop-ups, interstitials
• Tracking scripts — analytics trackers that follow you across sites
• Malware domains — known malicious websites
• Telemetry — data collection from apps and operating systems
• Smart TV ads — yes, your Samsung TV phones home constantly

A typical household sees 15-30% of all DNS queries blocked. That’s how much of your internet traffic is ads and tracking. Think about that.

Why This Matters for Smart Homes

Here’s something most people don’t realize: your smart home devices are chatty. Smart plugs, cameras, light bulbs — many of them constantly send data back to their manufacturers. Usage patterns, network information, sometimes even audio clips.

Pi-hole lets you see exactly what your devices are doing and block the traffic you don’t want. Your smart lights don’t need to report home to China. Pi-hole stops that.

Combined with Home Assistant’s local control, Pi-hole adds another layer of privacy. Your smart home stays smart without leaking data.

The Performance Difference

Blocking ads doesn’t just clean up your browsing experience — it makes everything faster.

• Faster page loads — pages aren’t waiting for dozens of ad scripts to load
• Less bandwidth — ads consume significant data, especially video ads
• Better battery life — fewer scripts running means less processing on mobile devices
• Cleaner smart TV experience — no more ads in your TV’s interface

Customers regularly tell us their home internet “feels faster” after we install Pi-hole. It’s not placebo — they’re literally loading less junk.

We Include It in Your Installation

When we install a Home Assistant hub, we can configure Pi-hole on the same hardware. It runs alongside Home Assistant on your Raspberry Pi 5 without any performance impact.

We set it up, point your router to use it as the DNS server, and configure the blocklists. You get a dashboard that shows exactly how many ads and trackers are being blocked across your network in real-time.

Want to whitelist a specific site? Easy — the dashboard has a simple whitelist button. Need to temporarily disable it for troubleshooting? One click.

Can You DIY This?

Absolutely. Pi-hole is free, open-source software. If you’ve got a Raspberry Pi and some basic terminal skills, you can set it up yourself. The Pi-hole website has excellent documentation.

But if you’d rather have it professionally configured alongside your smart home system, it’s included with our installations. No extra charge. It’s part of building a smart home that respects your privacy and runs efficiently.

The Bottom Line

Pi-hole is one of those “why didn’t I do this sooner” upgrades. It blocks ads and trackers on every device in your home, makes your internet faster, and gives you visibility into what your devices are actually doing on your network.

It’s free software, it runs on the same hardware as your Home Assistant hub, and it makes your entire digital life cleaner. That’s the kind of tech we love installing.

Get started with a smart home that blocks the noise and keeps you in control.