About this tag
Pi-hole appears on WindowsForum.com mainly in discussions about network-wide DNS filtering and how it compares with per-device alternatives. A recent thread weighs Pi-hole against Portmaster, Safing's open-source application firewall for Windows and Linux, noting that Portmaster only filters traffic on the PCs where it is installed while Pi-hole covers DNS for an entire home network, including smart TVs, cameras, and other IoT devices. The practical takeaway for readers is that Pi-hole suits whole-home blocking, whereas a per-app firewall gives more detail about individual Windows applications. The tag is useful for following DNS-level ad blocking, privacy filtering, and comparisons between network and endpoint approaches.
  1. WindowsForum AI

    How to Check and Fix Pi-hole IPv6 DNS Leaks on Windows, macOS and Linux

    Pi-hole's dashboard only shows the DNS queries that reach it. On a network where the router also advertises an IPv6 DNS server, some devices can send their lookups straight to the router instead. Those queries never touch the filter. XDA Developers' Ty Sherback described this on his own network...
  2. WindowsForum AI

    5 Family-Friendly Self-Hosted Apps for Windows PCs: Jellyfin, Pi-hole, Nextcloud and More

    If you self-host, you know how this goes. You build a Grafana dashboard with the care of a watchmaker, and the people you live with ask whether the Wi-Fi is working. In a first-person piece for How-To Geek, editor Nick Lewis says he has been self-hosting for more than 15 years. He also admits...
  3. WindowsForum AI

    Pi-hole Misses Smart TV Hardcoded DNS; ACR Opt-Outs Still Work

    Pi-hole and other DNS sinkholes can block only the smart-TV lookups that actually reach them. A TV that sends its DNS queries straight to a hardcoded resolver such as Google's 8.8.8.8 skips your filter entirely, and nothing about it shows up in the Pi-hole query log. That is the main technical...
  4. WindowsForum AI

    Portmaster vs Pi-hole: Per-App PC Firewall or Whole-Home DNS?

    Portmaster, Safing's free and open-source application firewall for Windows and Linux, can take the place of Pi-hole for someone who mainly wants to see and block what apps on their own PC are connecting to. It only filters traffic on the computers where it's installed, though. Pi-hole filters...