AdGuard has a “leave no device behind” policy. If you have a personal electronic device that can display ads, AdGuard can block them. Now, phones and computers? Sure, you can block ads there easily.
But what about everything else? You can’t really install ad blockers on smart TVs and gaming consoles. Also, do you know that your smart home devices and smartwatches can be used to track you? If all personal devices are going to have ads and trackers in them, you should be able to block them, too.
AdGuard Home tries to solve that problem by providing a network-wide ad-blocking solution. It filters all the ads, trackers, and malicious websites out of your network. This means you won’t get any ads on your devices as long as you’re connected to your home network.
What Does AdGuard Home Do?
Before we answer that question, let’s answer what ad blockers do. They block ads. It’s in the name. But most conventional ad blockers have constraints. For example, uBlock Origin is the most comprehensive ad blocker I know. But it’s limited by the browsers that support it. Most Android ad blockers are bound to specific browsers, or you need a dummy VPN profile to use them. Both are problematic for different reasons. There is no system-wide ad blocker for iOS devices. And then there are Smart TVs, PlayStations, and other devices. How do you block ads everywhere?
AdGuard Home is how. It works at a network level and filters out all ads before they can even reach your devices. It guards your network and prevents all bad things from entering.
How Does AdGuard Home Work?
AdGuard Home basically utilises AdGuard DNS, which can be installed on some devices very easily. But AdGuard home takes AdGuard DNS and makes it work network-wide.
To explain how AdGuard Home works, we need to first talk about how AdGuard DNS works. But before even that, we need to talk about DNS. It stands for Domain Name System. If you’re reading this article on the internet, you got here because of DNS.
Suppose you want to call Steve, and his number is 1234. It’s saved on your contacts, so you don’t have to remember the number. Similarly, when we type in www.youtube.com, we are typing in the Domain name and not the actual address, which looks something like 172.217.14.238. A DNS resolver like Google or Cloudflare makes sure that you are going to the right place.
AdGuard DNS does the same thing. But because it can now intercept your traffic, it can also cross reference all incoming and outgoing queries against its blocklist. So in the process, AdGuard can block those ads by sending them “nowhere.” So when an app on your device will try to show you an ad, it will come back empty.
AdGuard Home takes the functionality of AdGuard DNS and runs it on your network. So instead of replying on AdGuard’s servers, you can simply run your own DNS server.
What Are The Main Features of AdGuard Home?
AdGuard Home does a lot more than just block ads. It also blocks trackers, phishing and malware sites. It also gives you per-device controls, customisable filtering settings, and a solid content blocker. But that’s just the basics
Encrypted DNS for Privacy
Unlike most DNS-based ad blockers, AdGuard Home natively supports DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), DNS-over-TLS (DoT) and DNSCrypt. What does that mean? Your DNS requests are encrypted, so your ISP and third parties cannot peek into on your browsing.
Parental Controls and Safe Search
If you got kids at home, AdGuard Home can block adult content and put Safe Search on search engines like Google, Bing and YouTube. You don’t need to install extra filters or add custom rules or blocklists.
Security Without Performance Sacrifice
AdGuard Home also speeds up your internet by preventing trackers and junk scripts from loading. Unlike some ad blockers (Pi-hole, AdAway) that require root, AdGuard Home runs without root. Which makes it safer and easier to manage on any device.
How to Set Up AdGuard Home?
You shouldn’t attempt to run AdGuard Home on your network unless you have some basic knowledge of home networks and how they work. That being said, we won’t be giving you a step by step set-up guide you can find that on the project’s GitHub page. Also if I didn’t mention it before, AdGuard Home is completely free and open source.
And AdGuard Home needs to be run on an external device, the process can be different based on which device you choose. However, you will get a router that comes with AdGuard Home, you can probably skip most of it.
You need two things to run AdGuard Home. A device to run it on. Raspberry Pi is a popular choice. However, you can install it on a NAS, mini PC, old laptop, or even a cloud VPS (if you want to use it remotely). Here’s an overview of the process:
- Make sure the device you’re using is connected to your home network and running macOS or a Linux distro like Raspberry Pi OS.
- Download the latest build of AdGuard Home from GitHub.Â
- Install it on your device.
- Change your router’s DNS to use AdGuard Home’s address.Â
- Look around the dashboard, play with the filters and content blockers and enjoy an ad-free experience.
Is AdGuard Home Safe?
AdGuard Home is actually safer than AdGuard, which is already safe to begin with. You can read our full article on that. But what makes AdGuard Home safer?
Just like AdGuard, AdGuard Home is also free and open source. However, unlike AdGuard, it has no premium element. This is entirely free and will remain that way.
While AdGuard and other AdGuard DNS solutions are run on their servers, you can run AdGuard Home locally. This means your data won’t go on someone else’s cloud server. It will remain in your network.
Other than these, AdGuard Home makes an effort to make your entire network safer. You won’t get ads, trackers, or phishing sites. That is given. However, your ISP won’t be able to see your network activities. That’s a bonus.
Can AdGuard Home Block YouTube Ads?
While AdGuard could potentially block YouTube ads on the browser, they fail to do that on the app. And there isn’t much that can be done here. The ads on YouTube are served through the same domain as the content. So, the service could be broken if AdGuard Home attempted to block those ads on a DNS level. Your best bet for blocking YouTube ads is to use an ad-blocking extension with your browser.
Does AdGuard Home Slow Down Internet Speed?
It could potentially slow down your internet speed. But not because of AdGuard home. This depends on how you are hosting it. If you choose it host it on A Cloud VPS, it could take some time. Your network could even be disrupted if for some some reason the servers go down. For best performance, we recommend using a dedicated device connected via ethernet on your local network .
Other than that, AdGuard Home actually has the potential to speed up your internet, as it can block ads before they even enter your network.
How Does AdGuard Compare to Pi-hole?
AdGuard and Pi-hole both use “DNS sinkholing” to block ads and trackers across your network. While you need some network expertise to set both of them up, AdGuard is much easier to set up and manage. It comes with more features out of the box. It’s designed for casual users and doesn’t require any tinkering with SSH or other manual configuring utilities.
Features like encrypted DNS, phishing protection, parental controls, and per-device settings are all built-in with AdGuard. While you can get the same features on Pi-hole too, it requires some manual configuration. AdGuard is more plug-and-play compared to that.
Pi-holes only strength over AdGuard is that it’s lightweight. A lot of advanced users like it better as everything here is tweakable. AdGuard prioritises on a user-friendly interface.
Wrapping Up
AdGuard Home is a network-wide watchman that keeps all the unpleasantries out. It blocks ads on all devices, including those that don’t support traditional ad blocking. It’s relatively easy to set up, and my favourite fact about AdGuard Home is that it’s completely free and open-source.
Once you set it up you can forget about it, and it will keep doing it’s thing. While it has some shortcomings like the inability to block ads on YouTube and Facebook, pairing it with uBlock Origin on your web browsers can make it a much better experience.
If you want all the goodness of AdGuard but none of the complications, you can try any of the other ad-blocking products from AdGuard. AdGuard has browser extensions, DNS, system-wide apps for desktop and Android and much more. Use promo code CHECKADBLOCK30 to get an additional 30% discount on yearly and lifetime plans.