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AdGuard Home — Powerful network-wide tool against ads & tracking
It is probably not news to you that ad trackers follow you on wherever you go, not only on your computer, but also on your smartphone, and things like smart fridges, and even smart light bulbs⁉️
AdGuard Home is a free, open-source, self-hosted solution that protects ALL your devices from ads, trackers, malicious websites, and more!
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Chris Wilson
Hi @ay_meshkov, congrats on the launch – very exciting stuff! I see that AGH can be run on Windows/Mac/Linux/RPi but do you have any specific hardware requirements or recommendations? I have an old RPi Model B (512MB RAM) sitting around but I'm wondering about performance, network speed, etc. Thanks!
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Hi @chrilson, thank you!
Your RPi is just okay for AG Home. We have a bit newer RPi with AdGuard Home on board protecting our office network and it works perfectly. What for the network speed, AG does not affect it. Maybe even speeds it up a little if you use fast upstream (encrypted Cloudflare DNS is used by default, and it's quite fast).
@chrilson Awesome! Please let me know how it goes and what you think, users feedback defines what we do next.
Hello, hunters!
I am happy and proud to present you our most recent product — AdGuard Home! It is a very unique product for us, and I would even say it has a lot of history behind it. Let me explain why.
🤝 Introduction
AdGuard Home is not your regular app; it is a DNS server that blocks ads and trackers for the entire network. You can, for example, set up your home Wi-Fi to use it and everything in your house — desktop PCs, smartphones, and even IoT-devices — will be protected.
Throughout the last four years, our apps for Android and iOS were continuously hit by Google and Apple, who forced stricter and stricter limitations on ad blockers. We always wanted to develop a product that wouldn't depend on the will of some third-parties and instead would be 100% controlled by the user. AdGuard Home is specifically designed to fulfill this purpose.
📖 What's also important, it is free and open source — we welcome your feedback or other contribution. Whatever you have for us, visit us on GitHub: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/A...
🌍 Today
AdGuard Home in its current form is a perfectly usable product, but it is still a little rough around the edges. The biggest issue is that it is not so easy to install and configure for an unprepared user without specific knowledge. That's why we hesitated to call this version 1.0.
In the end, we labeled this iteration "v0.9", to emphasize that there is still more to come, and one of the highest priorities is to make the installation process more casual user-friendly.
🚀 In the future
We have big plans regarding the future of AdGuard Home. Here is a short list of what we are going to do next:
— One-click setup of a VPN integrated with AdGuard Home
— Improve the UI, make it better both functionally and aesthetically (send us your suggestions!)
— Enhance the encryption options — DNSCrypt and DoH support, a possibility to run in the encrypted DNS server mode
— Make it easier to use AdGuard Home with mobile devices
— Add optional integration of AG Home with other AdGuard products
In a perfect scenario, AdGuard Home will eventually become the central privacy protection hub for all your devices, simple to use and easy to configure.
🙋 We will be hanging around here all day if anyone has any questions!
@ay_meshkov thank you, I've been using adgaurd for 3 yrs and I can't see myself using internet without it. I'm happy to see new product from you, I really want to buy one as soon as it becomes available.
@garrymartin it seems we have to do it indeed. A lot of people are requesting it so expect it in one of the next minor updates.
@ay_meshkov Once the VPN feature goes live would it be possible to do selective routing? For example only have certain devices on the network use the VPN instead of all the devices?
Personally, I am against blocking ads by default. I don't use blockers on any of my devices and I don't remember seeing any intrusive ads in the last few months. IMO, enabling ads both supports the content provider that I don't otherwise pay and helps me unearth new, interesting products. I know this is an unpopular opinion, just my two cents.
Hi @ay_meshkov 👋
Small question: Does AdGuard block Google tags and Facebook Pixels as well?
@alon_keren hey Alon, the answer can't be small though 😉
By default, AG Home uses a single filter, so-called "simplified domain names filter," which does block most of the ad trackers, but tries not to break things at the same time. It does block Google Analytics and some FB tracking subdomains. But it does not block google tag manager (its primary purpose is not tracking, and trackers added as tags will be blocked anyway). Regarding FB, to completely prevent it from sneaking on you, you need to block facebook.com and all its subdomains, and this is a bit extreme for a default list.
If that's not enough, you can enable more aggressive filters in AG Home in a couple of clicks.
Like AdGuard applications without UI in OS
Pros:It's block ads)
Cons:I want more control
Their support really works fast, never had an issue they could not solve in a couple of hours.
Pros:The product has been developed by a notable company. Guys have been successfully fighting ads and trackers for quite a while.
Cons:Did not find any.
I've been using the Internet since the early '90s, so I remember the days when you had to hack through jungles of banner ads just to get what you wanted. Some time later, I discovered my first ad blocker, and I loved the concept; however, over the years, I just couldn't seem to find one that worked perfectly. They would either consume too many resources and make my browser lag, or they wouldn't catch all the possible ads I might encounter. But now, I've found a solution that I'm 100% satisfied with: AdGuard. With its adaptive filters, I can navigate to any domain and feel secure that ads are being filtered, and with its light resource footprint, I can continue my work without excessive lag times. Thanks AdGuard!
Hey @ay_meshkov - Is this different from https://pi-hole.net/ in terms of performance or features?
Hi @mayhemmonarch
First of all, pi-hole is an awesome product and kudos to its devs for doing a lot. Before AdGuard Home launch it was the only viable option in this field. Second, we named this version "0.9" for a reason. A lot of new features are planned for the nearest future.
Now to the questions.
1. Performance.
AdGuard Home has the same software under the hood as we use for our public AdGuard DNS servers (which are quite popular) so it is ready for the heavy load.
2. Some notable features/differences.
* Simple UI, configure malware/phishing blocking, blocking adult websites or enforcing safe search, all in a couple of clicks.
* It understands adblock rules syntax so you don't need 10k lines hosts files to block doubleclick subdomains.
* It shows you some metadata about domains, and it's quite interesting to see who really tracks you.
From the developer's point of view: AdGuard is built on modern tech and written entirely in golang, which makes the further development easier. It is not a set of different tools, but a single binary - easy to deploy and manage, and it can be compiled for whatever platform you want.
What about just making an ad guard router. Make it simple, just connect the router to the current network with the current password. Give everyone the ad guard network name and password. Bingo you have two networks, one filtered one not. Or you can simply put the main modem/router into bridge mode and use ad guard exclusively. Consider using a current mesh system as the router so people with bigger houses can get complete coverage. All mesh systems offer some parental controls (most lacking good functionality) but most don't have ad blocking built in. I'm all for a consumer plug and play solution that sits comfortably at the router level.
@frank_mardian that's more or less what we have in mind. Ideally, I want my mom to use AG Home, but I can't tell her "hey mom, get an RPi and read this manual about configuring AG Home". I want to be able to give here a device, and say "plug it in and voila" 😃
However, for this future to come, we need to polish the software part first.
@ay_meshkov that is great, I use your dns with family protection but my older kid has figured out he can just switch to google dns on his chromebook. There is no setting on my coda-4582 modem to enforce DNS which is unfortunate. Having a dedicated router would solve that. Currently I am thinking about getting a WRT open source router and adding DD-WRT but that is a long winded solution just to enforce dns.
@frank_mardian apparently, parental controls facilitate kids computer science knowledge 😉
@ay_meshkov your "hey mom" response prompts this question.
Before I go through with finding an RPi or other suitable hardware, if I install this for my mother and she finds that it's breaking a site or blocking something she needs, is there an easy way for her, who can barely use a computer, to disable or pause protection on a site directly from the browser? With UBlock Origin, it's easy for her to disable when something is broken by ad blocking. If she has to go through the web interface, she's not going to let me install it. There needs to be an easy way to pause or exclude directly from the browser, like with a companion extension, maybe.
That said, I'm probably going to be loading this onto my server this weekend to test at my house. It really looks neat.
Thanks!
@fzbinden some ads - yes, but not all. Some YT ads are loaded from first-party domains which cannot be blocked on a DNS-level without crippling the YT itself.
Is it possible to make some step-by-step instructions to install adguard home to Raspberry pi and make it as home router?
Or release Adguard router as itself? 😃
Hi @maxim_krasnyansky !
Here's an instruction for RPi: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/A...
> Or release Adguard router as itself? 😃
Maybe in future when the software part is polished enough
Hello, how to change timezone in Query Log ? at the moment I see a different time than on the server
@anton_pavlov hi! could you please report a bug to Github? In theory, it uses the same time zone as you server so we'll need to ask some questions to figure what's wrong.
AdGuard works wonders on my Android and Mac, so I'm a taker of a device that protects every single device at home without having to install software on everything in turn.
Pros:AdGuard makes good anti-ad software, this product is no exception
Cons:Didn't find any
What's the difference between adguad premium lifetime license v6.3 which I bought and adguard home? Do I need to go to the adguard home version or should i stay on the adguad premium v6.3
I already have a Bitdefender BOX. As I see it, they are complimentary. So, if I do use this I should set AdGuard Home's local IP address as my Bitdefender BOX custom dns server?
Does AdGuard Home support IPv6 blocking? I couldn't find any reference to it in the documentation.
So for now the mobile & desktop versions are a separate entity? Having just 1 configuration for variety of devices in the home would certainly be a blessing!