AdGuard Home Overview

What is AdGuard Home?

AdGuard Home is a network-wide software for blocking ads & tracking. After you set it up, it’ll cover ALL your home devices, and you don’t need any client-side software for that. With the rise of Internet-Of-Things and connected devices, it becomes more and more important to be able to control your whole network.

AdGuard vs PiHole

Feature	AdGuard Home	Pi-Hole
Blocking ads and trackers	✅	✅
Customizing blocklists	✅	✅
Built-in DHCP server	✅	✅
HTTPS for the Admin interface	✅	Kind of, but you’ll need to manually configure lighttpd
Encrypted DNS upstream servers (DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS, DNSCrypt)	✅	❌ (requires additional software)
Cross-platform	✅	❌ (not natively, only via Docker)
Running as a DNS-over-HTTPS or DNS-over-TLS server	✅	❌ (requires additional software)
Blocking phishing and malware domains	✅	❌ (requires non-default blocklists)
Parental control (blocking adult domains)	✅	❌ (requires non-default blocklists)
Force Safe search on search engines	✅	❌
Per-client (device) configuration	✅	✅
Access settings (choose who can use AGH DNS)	✅	❌
Running [without root privileges][wiki-noroot]	✅	❌

Source

Setup

1. Install Docker and Docker Compose

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install docker.io docker-compose
   sudo systemctl enable --now docker.socket
   

2. Deactivate DNSStubListener and update the DNS server address. Create a new file, /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/adguardhome.conf (creating the /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d directory if needed) and add the following content to it:

[Resolve]
DNS=127.0.0.1
DNSStubListener=no

Specifying 127.0.0.1 as the DNS server address is necessary because otherwise the nameserver will be 127.0.0.53 which doesn’t work without DNSStubListener.

1. Activate a new resolv.conf file:

   sudo mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.backup
   sudo ln -s /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
   

2. Stop DNSStubListener:

   sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved
   

3. Download the compose File and run it

   wget https://www.ryanvanmassenhoven.com/assets/2023/AdGuard-Home/docker-compose.yml
   sudo docker-compose up -d
   

4. Follow the Onscreen prompts

5. Once the setup wizard is complete set your DHCP server to use AdGuard as your DNS server