I've set it up for most of my close family and friends, added a physical button to the top of the Raspberry Pi case that disables it for x minutes (x changes depending who they are and their needs), so if they're having issues they go press the button to access the problematic website.

I keep reading about people having to disable the Pi-Hole so much that it becomes annoying, or constantly butting heads with websites that don't work with Pi-Holes, but I can honestly say that I, and the people I've set them up for, BARELY EVER need to use the Disable button. Not for online banking, not for online shopping, not for any regular content consumed. I can't personally think of the last time I needed to disable the Pi-Hole for anything at all. It just sits there blocking ads invisibly, plugged into the back of my modem/router, and is one of my absolute favourite parts of my tech stack.

What websites are people visiting that the Pi-Hole doesn't work with? I'm genuinely curious, because I've been running mine for a couple years now and can't think of anything off the top of my head, and no one in my family group have ever complained about it, with most telling me it's been flawless and they barely every touch the button.

> What websites are people visiting that the Pi-Hole doesn't work with?

Usually sites where the dev has based functionality on a JS module loaded from an advertise/tracker site, and that is being blocked, resulting in missing functionality.

Two prominent examples that I've personally had to deal with: CVS, and Taco Bell's iOS app.

Edit: Oh, and google's inserted redirects in shopping results lists are blocked by default.

Airline metasearch engines like Skyscanner & Kayak use all kinds of advertisement and tracking trickery.

My wife gets a lot of email, most of it marketing stuff. Most email links will not work with PiHole enabled due to the massive amount of tracking they go through. I always know when she's checking her email if I'm on my phone, cause all of a sudden I start seeing ads for a few minutes.

I get occasional instances. I've let everyone know to let me know if they're experiencing issues and I can check the log and whitelist specific material that needs it.

That comes up now and again, not as much as you'd expect but enough that I needed to give instruction on it. Funny thing is, most of those cases are _me_ doing things like signing into Nvidia's software instead of anyone else here.

This is where Firefox DNS over Https comes in handy. I have 2 Firefox installs - Firefox and Firefox Developer Edition with one set to use DOH so always bypassing pihole.

I like that physical button solution. Do you have a github repo or blog post documenting how you did it anywhere?

I haven't posted anything, but it's pretty simple really. Follow any of the guides to make a physical button run a Python/BASH script[0] and then I wrote a small script that just CURLs the URL to disable the Pi-Hole for a few minutes (eg: curl --silent http://192.168.2.2/admin/api.php?disable=600&auth=PASSWORD ).

I've been meaning to make a blog post about it but haven't got around to it yet. I'll try write something up later today/tonight.

[0] https://raspberrypihq.com/use-a-push-button-with-raspberry-p...

Edit: I found this which is a much bigger/fancier version of what I did, but has the associated code you can pull out for a simple button: https://github.com/nickearl/piHoleButtons

I like the button idea... you got a howto for that?

Answered above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23075004

I have an iOS shortcut that hits the disable endpoint, so they have a button on their phone they tap that will disable it for 30 minutes at a time.

Yeah, I found and tweaked this for my needs: https://routinehub.co/shortcut/5005

Works great, even if I dont invoke Siri to trigger it.

Clever!

They would still have to know that the site isn't working because of blocking, but I suppose developing the habit of "website doesn't work, press the magic button and try again" isn't so bad.

If I do PiHole just for myself I think I'll add this button. Thanks!

Any chance you can share that shortcut? I currently have a bookmark that my roommate can hit, but a shortcut would be better.

I use a modified version of this with hard coded times so there is no user input: https://routinehub.co/shortcut/2904

thank you for sharing

I do the same and use the shortcut at least once a day for things I don't want to permanently unblock but might need occasionally. I set it via a shortlink on bit.ly so it's easy for people to remember/bookmark.

It points to ..../admin/api.php?disable=300&auth=authkey

300: Time in seconds to disable it.

Auth key: You need to have a password set for the Pi-hole installation, and the API key is the salted version of that password. You can find it as the value for the key WEBPASSWORD in your /etc/pihole/setupVars.conf file.

what an automation!

In addition to what other people have said, you'll have a nightmare of a time if the power goes out and your router re-assigns new LAN IPs (nightmare if you're not in the same household as the non-technical user). Try to setup a Pi-Hole with a static IP if you can.

[Edit] Grammar.

That's one of the reasons why I created dnsadblock.com (besides the fact that I couldn't use it while traveling). It shows a page with a message if the request was blocked (ex: http://tracking.blocked.dnsadblock.com/#/) but only for regular http traffic because I don't want to go down the route of playing with certificates to make it work on https.

I think I managed to have the blacklist/whitelist easier though by creating an activity log page that shows exactly what was blocked and allowed and on what device - in near real-time. Fun project at first but I didn't know what I was going into at first.

It is a bit frustrating when starting but, once you start whitelisting what was blocked by mistake, you will see that it gets easier, almost unnoticeable by a week or so.

I always had uBlock and disconnect.me and it still blocks, somewhat consistent, about 16% of the traffic which is a big number considering.

Yep, it's for this reason I had to turn off the pi-hole. Random sites that my wife or friends would use wouldn't work, especially log-ins or authentications for various sites, and there's no easy to surface bypass ability. So now I just rely on browser based blocking.

You say it like its a bad thing. Same person wont understand why putting your password into random website is bad, or why all of those windows and notifications keep popping up, or why you shouldn't click download followed by clicking run on random websites.

agreed

I set up DNS-based ad-blocking for my parents via Eero. The app-based ad-blocking toggle is easier than something with a web admin interface for them to manage.