A Brief Review of AdGuard Home: Definition, Benefits

Published on: August 20, 2021

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15 min read

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For German Version

Ads and trackers may follow you around the internet, disrupting, cluttering, and even altering your online experience. Most web advertisements are not only undesired but also irrelevant. Trackers use your personal information to determine the most efficient way to pitch and sell to you. Both ads and trackers cause your browser to slow down by displaying image-rich banners, pop-ups, and obnoxious animations, interfering with and degrading your web experience.

According to a recent study, there are nearly 200 million internet users worldwide who use an ad blocker, with the figure being highest in Europe at 77 million. Greece has the highest rate of ad blocking in the region, accounting for 37 percent of users.

AdGuard Home is a network-wide security software used for blocking advertisements and tracking. After you install it, it protects all devices in your home network without requiring any client-side software. With the spread of Internet-of-Things and connected devices, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to control your entire network.

AdGuard Home provides you a variety of advantages as listed below

• Does not require the installation of any applications. All you need to do is to follow this simple setup guide.

• It is open-source and free for personal use.

• It supports all modern DNS privacy standards: DNSCrypt, DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS.

• It provides two modes:

  • Default Mode for blocking ads and trackers, and
  • Family Mode for the same functionality plus parental control tools.

• You can use it on any Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS operated device.

• AdGuard provides you a faster, safer, and more comfortable web surfing experience.

We will cover the following topics briefly in this article:

1. What is AdGuard Home

2. How Does AdGuard Home Work?

3. Why use AdGuard Home?

4. How to install AdGuard Home

5. What are The Benefits of AdGuard Home?

6. What are The Disadvantages of AdGuard Home?

What is AdGuard Home?

AdGuard Home is open-source security software that provides a unified solution for blocking ads and trackers on all devices within your network. Additionally, AdGuard Home accomplishes this network-wide protection without needing any software installed on your client devices. Simultaneously, it provides a user-friendly web interface that allows you to manage traffic easily, even from a mobile phone. It acts as a DNS server, redirecting tracking domains to a black hole, preventing your devices from connecting to those servers. It's based on the same software that powers AdGuard DNS servers; they share a lot of code.

AdGuard Home is a quick and simple way to block ads on any device and keep your children safe online.

AdGuard Home is also a very respectful application to your privacy. Its main principle is that you should be the one in charge of your data. As a result, AdGuard Home does not collect usage statistics and does not use web services unless you configure it to do so.

How Does AdGuard Home Work?

AdGuard Home acts as a DNS server, redirecting tracking domains to a "black hole" preventing your devices from connecting to those servers.

When you install AdGuard Home in your network, AdGuard DNS starts to answer DNS queries. And, if a browser or an app sends an ad request, AdGuard DNS returns an empty response. AdGuard has its own domain name registry where it serves fraud, ads, and trackers. AdGuard DNS is updated on a regular and frequent basis for effective security.

AdGuard Home has two modes for AdGuard DNS to operate in. Ads, counters, harmful and phishing websites are all blocked in the Default Mode. The Family Mode does the same thing, but it also blocks adult content and enables safe search in your browser.

Figure 1. How AdGuard Home works

Because you have this local DNS server by using AdGuard Home, cached requests can be even faster than before, and you can avoid all unnecessary ad traffic.

Why use AdGuard Home?

Ads and trackers keep their eyes on you wherever you click on the web, not just on your PC, but also on your mobile device/phone and even in the smart car, smart refrigerators, and other devices. Even if you have no objections to companies collecting data on you, tracking can be extremely dangerous. Ads may be more harmful than annoying you during web surfing. Since they have long been used as a gateway to various types of malware, viruses, crypto lockers, phishing, and trackers. Ads also consume a lot of bandwidth, resulting in latency and a frustrating web browsing experience.

When you run your own AdGuard Home server, you can do much more than when you use a public DNS server such as:

• You may choose what the server will or will not block

• Monitor activities and view what's going on in your network

• Define your own custom filtering rules by adding your own blocking lists, exclude or block certain domains, and more

• Query log feature offers all kinds of information about DNS requests in your network that you might need. You can also use it for adding domains to a blacklist or a whitelist quickly.

Lastly, AdGuard Home has no application dependency which means that it does not require any applications to be installed. As a result, AdGuard Home can assist in blocking ads, tracking, and analytics requests from various types of devices, such as SmartTVs, smart speakers, and other types of IoT devices (on which traditional ad blockers cannot be installed). You can use it on any device that runs Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS.

How to install AdGuard Home

AdGuard Home is currently available for the following operating systems:

• macOS

• Windows 32-bit

• Windows 64-bit

• Linux 64-bit

• Linux 32-bit

• Linux 64-bit ARM

• Linux 32-bit ARMv5

• FreeBSD 64-bit

• Raspberry Pi (32-bit ARMv6)

• MIPS

• MIPSLE

AdGuard Home provides you both manual and automated installation on Linux and Mac. But, you must install it on Windows manually.

Starting the AdGuard Home installation process necessitates only rudimentary technical knowledge and familiarity with concepts such as command prompt. However, after you complete the first few steps, you will be greeted by a visual installation wizard.

AdGuard Home Manual Installation

You may manually install the AdGuard Home by following the next steps easily.

1. Download the latest stable release's archive containing the binary file for your operating system. At the time of this writing, the latest version of AdGuard Home is v0.106.3

   

   Figure 2. Downloading AdGuardHome

2. DNS works on port 53 and requires superuser or administrator privileges. So, you must run the following command in your Linux terminal.

   sudo ./AdGuardHome

   If you are using Windows, you must run cmd.exe with administrator privileges and run AdGuardHome.exe from there or right click on the AdGuardHome.exe and click Run as administrator to install AdGuard Home to your Windows.

   

   Figure 3. Installing AdGuard Home as administrator on Windows

   note

   If your firewall alerts you about Adguard access, click Allow access to allow the Windows Defender Firewall to allow AdGuard Home access.

   

   Figure 4. Allow AdGuard Home access on Windows Defender Firewall

3. When you first launch AdGuard Home, it will begin listening to 0.0.0.0:3000 and prompt you to open it in your browser:

   AdGuard Home is available at the following addresses:
   Go to http://127.0.0.1:3000
   Go to [http://X.X.X.X:3000](http://x.x.x.x:3000)

   

   Figure 5. Launching AdGuard Home

4. Connect to http://127.0.0.1:3000 with your favorite browser. You may go through the initial configuration wizard there. Click Next to proceed to the installation wizard.

   

   Figure 6. AdGuard Home installation wizard

5. Select interfaces for Admin Web Interface and DNS Server. We will select All interfaces for both. Also, you may set the port to run these services. Then, click Next

   

   Figure 7. Selecting interfaces running AdGuard Home Web and DNS servers

6. Enter username and password for the web interface. Then, click Next.

   

   Figure 8. Setting username and password for AdGuard Home Web GUI

7. Configure your devices to use an AdGuard Home device as DNS server. You may find more information about how to configure devices for AdGuard Home in below. Then, click Next.

   

   Figure 9. Configuring AdGuard Home client devices

8. Congratulations. Your AdGuard Home installation is finished.

   

   Figure 10. AdGuard Home installation is finished

   

   Figure 11. AdGuard Home Dashboard

Running As a Service

Follow the next step to register AdGuard Home as a system service on Windows or Linux to enable it to start automatically after the system reboot.

• Run sudo ./AdGuardHome -s install to install AdGuard Home as a system service on Linux.

• Run cmd.exe with admin privileges and run AdGuardHome.exe -s install to register a windows service on Windows

Here are some additional commands that you may need to control the AdGuard Home.

• To uninstall the AdGuard Home service run the following command:

  AdGuardHome -s uninstall

• To start the AdGuard Home service run the following command:

  AdGuardHome -s start

• To stop the AdGuard Home service run the following command:

  AdGuardHome -s stop

• To restart the AdGuard Home service run the following command:

  AdGuardHome -s restart

• To show the current AdGuard Home service status run the following command:

  AdGuardHome -s status

AdGuard Home Automated Installation on Linux and Mac

To install AdGuard Home on a Linux or Mac machine, you may run the following command in your terminal:

curl -s -S -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome/master/scripts/install.sh | sh -s -- -v

This script accepts the following parameters:

• -c <channel> to use specified channel.

• -r to reinstall AdGuard Home;

• -u to uninstall AdGuard Home;

• -v for verbose output;

note

Options -r and -u are mutually exclusive.

Updating AdGuard Home

AdGuard Home's UI displays a notification message and a 'Update Now' button when a new version is released. By clicking this button you may upgrade AdGuard Home to the most recent version.

Figure 12. AdGuard Update notification

Your old AdGuard Home executable file and its configuration file, are saved in the 'backup' directory so that you can undo the changes if necessary.

In case an automatic update has failed, you can also upgrade manually by following the steps given below:

1. Download the new AdGuard Home package/zip file.

2. Unpack/unzip it to a temporary directory.

3. Replace the old AdGuard Home executable file with the new one.

4. Restart AdGuard Home.

How to configure your client devices

To be able to get the benefits of the AdGuard Home, your clients must use your AdGuard Home server as a DNS server. You may follow the instructions given below.

Router configuration for AdGuard Home

You can configure your router's DHCP service to tell all network clients to use AdGuard Home's IP address as the DNS nameserver instead when it's running on your network. If you configure your router as described in this section, this setup will automatically cover all devices connected to your router, and you will not need to configure each one individually.

1. Open the settings for your router by accessing it from your browser via a URL (like http://192.168.0.1/).

2. Find the DHCP/DNS settings.

3. Enter your AdGuard Home server IP addresses as a DNS server.

Android configuration for AdGuard Home

You can configure your Android devices to use AdGuard Home by following the steps below.

1. From the Android Menu home screen, tap Settings

2. Tap Wi-Fi on the menu. All of the available networks will be listed.

3. Long press the network you're connected to, and tap Modify Network.

4. Depending on your device, you may need to check the box for Advanced to view further settings. To change the DNS settings, you will need to switch the IP settings from DHCP to Static.

5. Set all DNS server fields to your AdGuard Home server IP address.

iOS

You can configure your iOS devices to use AdGuard Home by following the steps below.

1. From the home screen, tap Settings

2. Choose Wi-Fi in the left menu

3. Tap on the name of the network you're connected to

4. Set all DNS server fields to your AdGuard Home server IP address.

macOS

You can configure your macOS devices to use AdGuard Home by following the steps below.

1. Click on the Apple icon and go to System Preferences.

2. Click on Network.

3. Select the first connection in your list and click Advanced.

4. Select the DNS tab and Set all DNS server fields to your AdGuard Home server IP address.

Windows

You can configure your Windows devices to use AdGuard Home by following the steps below.

1. Open the Control Panel through the Start menu.

2. Navigate to the Network and Internet category -> Network and Sharing Center.

3. Click Change adapter settings on the left side of the screen.

4. Select your active connection, right-click on it and choose Properties.

5. Click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IP)

6. Click on Properties.

7. Select Use the following DNS server addresses and enter your AdGuard Home server IP address there.

Verification of AdGuard Home Configuration

To verify your AdGuard Home installation and configuration you may follow the instructions given below.

1. Enter the command given below in your terminal.

   nslookup doubleclick.net

2. You should see 0.0.0.0 as the answer, because the default DNS server is now AdGuard Home, which blackholes the request.

   

   Figure 13. AdGuard Home configuration verification

3. You may check the doubleclick.net connection is blocked by viewing the blocked domains on AdGuard Home dashboard or searching the doubleclick.net in the Query Log tab of AdGuard Home GUI.

   

   Figure 14. Viewing Query Log of AdGuard Home

What is an AdGuard Filter List?

AdGuard filter is a set of rules in text format that AdGuard applications, such as AdGuard Home, employ to filter advertising and potentially harmful information, like trackers, banners, pop-ups, etc. Rules for specific geographical locations, such as Japanese filter, Chinese filter, etc., or for a specific purpose, Tracking Protection filter, Annoyances filter, etc., are grouped into a single filter list. You can enable or disable all at once.

Currently, available AdGuard filters are listed below:

• Base filter: Ads are removed from web pages in English. Originally based on EasyList.

• DNS filter: a combination of different filters (AdGuard Base, Mobile Ads, EasyList, Social Media, Spyware, and EasyPrivacy) that has been simplified to work better with DNS-level adblocking. AdGuard DNS servers employ this DNS filtering option to block advertisements and tracking.

• URL Tracking filter: Removes tracking parameters from URLs to improve privacy. This filter is enabled automatically when a user chooses to disable tracking parameters in Stealth Mode.

• Tracking Protection filter: A comprehensive list of online counters and web analytics tools. It can be used to mask your internet activities and prevent being tracked.

• Social media filter: Removes multiple "Like" and "Tweet" buttons from famous websites, as well as other social media integrations.

• Annoyances filter: Third-party widgets, cookie notices, and in-page popups are all blocked by the Annoyances filter on webpages (except for social media elements). It's based on Fanboy Annoyances List, however, it's not the same.

• Filter unblocking search ads and self-promotions: Unblocks adverts that may be useful to users by filtering out search ads and self-promotions.

• Spanish/Portuguese filter: Ads from websites in Spanish and Portuguese are blocked. Originally based on the Fanboy's Spanish/Portuguese filter, and later updated in response to user feedback.

• French filter: Eliminates advertisements from French-language websites. Originally based on the Liste FR filter, and later updated in response to user complaints

• Japanese filter: Eliminates advertisements from Japanese-language websites. Originally based on Fanboy's Japanese filter, and later changed in response to user feedback.

• Russian filter: Eliminates advertisements from Russian-language websites. Initially based on the RU AdList filter, but later created separately.

• German filter: Eliminates advertisements from German-language websites. Originally based on the EasyList Germany filter, and later updated in response to user complaints.

• Dutch filter: Eliminates advertisements from Dutch-language websites. Originally based on the EasyList Dutch filter and then changed to meet the requirements.

• Turkish filter: Eliminates advertisements from web pages in Turkish.

• Chinese filter: Eliminates advertisements from Chinese-language websites. Originally based on the EasyList China filter and later changed in response to user feedback.

• Experimental filter: It is used to test some new filtering rules that may cause conflicts and cause websites to malfunction. If these rules work without a hitch, they are included in the main filters.

• Mobile ad filter: Prevents advertising from appearing on mobile devices. All known mobile ads are included.

How to Add AdGuard Home Filter?

AdGuard Home allows you to manage your filter lists by clicking on the Filter dropdown menu on the navigation bar.

Figure 15. AdGuard Home Filters menu

You can perform the following tasks under the Filters menu.

• Managing DNS blocklists

• Managing DNS allowlists

• Configuring DNS rewrites

• Managing Blocked services

• Managing Custom filtering rules

We'll explain how to manage filters on your AdGuard Home service briefly in this section.

How to Manage DNS blocklists

You can manage your DNS blocklists by clicking on the DNS blocklists link under the Filters dropdown menu. This will redirect you to the DNS blocklists page.

Figure 16. DNS blocklists on AdGuard Home

You can perform the following tasks on DNS blocklists page:

• Viewing available filter lists

• Enable/disable a filter list

• Edit a filter list

• Delete a filter list

• Add a filter list

• Update filter lists

How to View Available Filter Lists

You can view the available filter lists on your AdGuard Home service on the DNS blocklists page. This page provides you the following information details about the filter lists:

• Status (Enabled/Disabled) of the filter

• Name of the filter

• URL of the filter

• Rules count of the filter

• Last update time of the filter

How to Enable/Disable a Filter List

To enable a filter list, you can check the check box in the Enabled column of the DNS blocklists page. When you enable a filter list on your AdGuard Home service, it will block domains matching the blocklists.

To disable a filter list, you can uncheck the checkbox in the Enabled column of the DNS blocklists page. When a filter list is disabled, the Rules count of the filter is set to 0.

How to Edit a Filter List

To edit a filter list, you can follow the next steps given below:

1. Click on the Edit button on the Action column of the DNS blocklists page. This will open a dialog box.

2. You may change the Name of the filter list as you wish.

3. You may change the URL of the filter list as you wish.

4. Click on the Save to activate the changes.

Figure 17. Editing an AdGuard Home Filter List

How to Delete a Filter List

To delete a filter list, you can follow the next steps given below:

1. Click on the delete button with a trash box icon on the Action column of the DNS blocklists page. This will open a dialog box for confirming the removal.

2. Click on the OK to delete the filter list.

Figure 18. Confirming the removal of an AdGuard Home filter list

How to Add a Filter List

You may either add a filter from one of the existing AdGuard Home filter lists or create a custom one as you wish.

To add one of the available AdGuard Home filter lists, you may follow the steps below:

1. Click on the Add blocklist button at the bottom left of the DNS blocklists page. This will open a dialog box.

   

   Figure 19. Adding new blocklist for AdGuard Home

2. Click on the Choose from the list button.

3. Select one or multiple filters from the list. You may scroll down for selection.

   tip

   Clicking on the home icon next to the filter will open the official site of the filter in a new tab.

   Clicking on the info icon next to the filter will open the rules of the filter from the official site in a new tab.

   

   Figure 20. Selecting blocklist for AdGuard Home

4. Click on the Save to activate the changes.

To add a custom filter, you may follow the steps below:

1. Click on the Add blocklist button at the bottom left of the DNS blocklists page. This will open a dialog box.

2. Click on the Add a custom list button. This will open a dialog box.

3. Fill in the Name of the filter list as you wish.

4. Fill in the URL of the filter list as valid.

5. Click on the Save to activate the changes.

Figure 21. Adding custom blocklist for the AdGuard Home

How to Update Filter Lists

You can easily update filter lists for your AdGuard Home service by following the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → DNS blocklist on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Click on the Check for updates button at the bottom of the page. This will update the lists on your AdGuard Home and display the results at the right bottom of the page for a moment.

How to Manage DNS allowlists

AdGuard Home allows you to define custom whitelists/allowlists. Even if they are in any of the blocklists, domains from DNS allowlists will be authorized. You can manage your DNS allowlists by clicking on the DNS allowlists link under the Filters dropdown menu. This will redirect you to the DNS allowlists page.

Figure 22. DNS allowlists on AdGuard Home

You can perform the following tasks on the DNS allowlists page:

• Viewing allowlists

• Enable/disable an allowlist

• Edit an allowlist

• Delete an allowlist

• Add an allowlist

• Update allowlist

How to View Allowlists

You can view the allow lists on your AdGuard Home service by navigating to Filters → DNS allowlist on AdGuard Home web UI. This page provides you the following information details about the allowlists:

• Status (Enabled/Disabled) of the list

• Name of the list

• URL of the list

• Rules count of the list

• Last update time of the list

How to Enable/Disable an Allowlist

To enable an allow list, you can check the check box in the Enabled column of the DNS allowlists page.

To disable an allow list, you can uncheck the checkbox in the Enabled column of the DNS allowlists page. When an allow list is disabled, the Rules count of the allowlist is set to 0, and domains in the list will be blocked if they are on one of the blacklists.

How to Edit an Allowlist

To edit an allow list, you can follow the next steps given below:

1. Click on the Edit button on the Action column of the DNS allowlists page. This will open a dialog box.

2. You may change the Name of the allow list as you wish.

3. You may change the URL of the allow list as you wish.

4. Click on the Save to activate the changes.

How to Delete an Allowlist

To delete an allow list, you can follow the next steps given below:

1. Click on the delete button with a trash box icon on the Action column of the DNS allowlists page. This will open a dialog box for confirming the removal.

2. Click on the OK to delete the allow list.

How to Add an Allowlist

To add an allow list, you may follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → DNS allowlist on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Click on the Add allowlist button at the left bottom of the DNS allowlist page. This will open a dialog box.

3. Fill in the Name of the allow list as you wish.

4. Fill in the URL of the allow list as valid.

5. Click on the Save to activate the changes.

Figure 23. Adding new allowlist for the AdGuard Home

How to Update Allow Lists

You can easily update filter lists for your AdGuard Home service by following the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → DNS allowlist on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Click on the Check for updates button at the bottom of the page. This will update the lists on your AdGuard Home and display the results at the right bottom of the page for a moment.

How to Configure DNS rewrites

AdGuard Home makes it simple to set up a custom DNS response for a specific domain name. To add a DNS rewrite, you can follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → DNS rewrites on AdGuard Home web UI.

   

   Figure 24. DNS rewrites on AdGuard Home

2. Click on the Add DNS rewrites button at the left bottom of the DNS rewrites page. This will open a dialog box.

3. Enter the domain name or wildcard you want to be rewritten.

4. Enter IP address or domain name.

5. Click the Save button to activate the changes.

Figure 25. Adding DNS rewrite on AdGuard Home

To remove a DNS rewrite, you can follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → DNS rewrites on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Click on the delete button with a trash box icon on the Action column of the DNS rewrites page. This will open a dialog box for confirming the removal.

   

   Figure 26. Deleting DNS rewrite on AdGuard Home

3. Click on the OK to delete the filter list.

   

   Figure 27. Confirming the removal of an AdGuard Home DNS rewrite

How to Manage DNS Blocked Services

AdGuard Home allows you to quickly block popular sites and services. Some of the popular sites that can be blocked easily by the AdGuard Home are as follows:

• Youtube

• Vimeo

• Twitter

• TikTok

• Disney+

• CloudFlare

• Amazon

• EBay

• Whatsapp etc.

You can perform the following tasks on Blocked services of the AdGuard Home:

• Blocking All Services

• Unblocking All Services

• Blocking Specific Service

• Unblocking Specific Service

Figure 28. Managing Blocked Services on AdGuard Home

To block all services, you can follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → DNS Blocked Services on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Click on the Block all button at the top of the page. This will change the color of all toggle buttons to solid red.

3. Click on the Save button at the bottom of the page to activate the changes.

Figure 29. All services are blocked on AdGuard Home

To unblock all services, you can follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → DNS Blocked Services on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Click on the Unblock all button at the top of the page. This will change the color of all toggle buttons to solid gray.

3. Click on the Save button at the bottom of the page to activate the changes.

To block/unblock a specific service, you can follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → DNS Blocked Services on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Click on the toggle button next to the service that you wish to block or unblock.

Figure 30. Some of the services are blocked on AdGuard Home

How to Define Custom Filtering Rules

AdGuard Home allows you to define custom filtering rules and check the filter for a domain easily.

Figure 31. Adding custom filtering rules

To add a custom filtering rule, you can follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → Custom filtering rules on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Enter your new rule with correct syntax.

   info

   Some examples for filtering rules are given below:

   1. ||harmful.com^: block access to the harmful.com domain and all its subdomains

   2. @@||harmful.com^: unblock access to the harmful.com domain and all its subdomains

   3. 127.0.0.1 harmful.com : AdGuard Home will now return 127.0.0.1 address for the harmful.com domain (but not its subdomains).

   4. ! You can write a comment: just a comment

   5. # You can write a comment too: just a comment

   6. /REGEX/: block access to the domains matching the specified regular expression

3. Click on the Apply button to activate the rules.

To check filtering for a specific domain, you can follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Filters → Custom filtering rules on AdGuard Home web UI.

2. Scroll down to the Check the filtering pane.

3. Enter the domain you want to check.

4. Click on the Check button. This will display the result at the bottom of the pane.

5. If the domain is blocked, the related filtering rule will also be displayed. You can unblock it by clicking the Unblock button. This will add a new custom filtering rule to unblock the domain.

   

   Figure 32. Checking the filtering for a blocked domain

6. If the domain is allowed, you can block it by clicking the Block button. This will add a new custom filtering rule to block the domain.

   

   Figure 33. Checking the filtering for an unblocked domain

   

   Figure 34. Custom filtering rules sample

What are The Benefits of AdGuard Home?

AdGuard Home has a variety of advantages that improves the security and comfort of clients in a home network. We will cover the following benefits of AdGuard Home as listed below.

• Ad Blocking

• Browsing Security

• Parental Control

• Safe Search

• Custom Upstream Servers

1. Adblocking

AdGuard Home provides a blocking mechanism throughout the entire system. This includes video ads as well as ads in your favorite apps, games, browsers, and websites. It also provides you access to dozens of ad filters that are regularly updated to ensure the best filtering quality.

2. Browsing Security

AdGuard Home prevents access to harmful, fake, or malware websites. This feature is completely optional and you may enable it to protect your client against cyber threats.

Also, AdGuard Home says that its top priority is to keep your personal information safe.

If you use AdGuard, you and your sensitive data will be protected from any online tracker and analytics system that might try to steal your data while you're browsing the web. By using AdGuard for ad-blocking, you may protect yourself against the following privacy violations and security risks:

• Tracking your data

• Building your personality profile

• Selling and sharing your data

• Your behavioral analysis

3. Parental Control

In addition to the regular benefits of ad blocking and browsing security, you may use the Family protection mode optionally to block access to all websites with adult and inappropriate content as well as enforce safe search in the browser.

Figure 35. Page blocked due to AdGuard Home parental control

4. Safe Search

SafeSearch is a search engine feature that acts as an automated filter for potentially offensive and pornography or inappropriate content. While SafeSearch is not perfect, it is intended to help you block explicit results, such as pornography, from your search engine results. At the time of writing, SafeSearch is supported by Google, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Bing and Pixabay.

When the Family Protection mode is enabled on AdGuard Home, it enforces safe search everywhere where it's possible.

Figure 36. Enabling Safe Search on AdGuard Home

5. Custom Upstream Servers

AdGuard Home functions as a DNS proxy and forwards your DNS queries to the upstream servers. It allows you to customize these upstream DNS servers. Upstream server capabilities of AdGuard Home are as follow:

• You may specify multiple upstream servers such as:

  • tls://dns-unfiltered.adguard.com : encrypted DNS-over-TLS
  • https://dns-unfiltered.adguard.com/dns-query : encrypted DNS-over-HTTPS
  • 67.45.35.40 : regular DNS (over UDP)
  • tcp://94.140.14.140 : regular DNS (over TCP)
  • sdns://... : you can use DNS Stamps for DNSCrypt or DNS-over-HTTPS resolvers
  • quic://dns-unfiltered.adguard.com:784: encrypted DNS-over-QUIC (experimental)

• You may specify a DNS server that will be used to resolve specific domains.

  • [/mycompany.local/]91.15.21.36: You can specify a DNS upstream for the specific domain(s)

• Bootstrap DNS servers can be specified to resolve IP addresses of DoH/DoT resolvers you define as upstreams.

• You may specify private DNS servers for local PTR queries/ reverse DNS (rDNS) requests. These servers use rDNS to resolve the hostnames of clients with private IP addresses, such as "192.168.0.45." If this option is not selected, AdGuard Home will use your operating system's default DNS resolvers.

• You may specify how your DNS queries will be handled by Upstream servers by choosing one of the following options:

  • Load Balancing: AdGuard Home sends your queries to only one upstream server which is the fastest server at a time.
  • Parallel Requests: AdGuard Home sends parallel requests to all upstream servers at the same time to speed up the name resolution.
  • Fastest IP address: AdGuard Home sends your queries to all upstream servers but returns only the fastest IP address among them to the clients.

Figure 37. Upstream DNS servers settings on AdGuard Home

What are The Disadvantages of AdGuard Home?

Although AdGuard Home is a very useful ad-blocking software for home users, it has some drawbacks as follows:

1. No L7/Application filtering capabilities

AdGuard Home does not have packet inspection capability. And, it does not have web content filtering and application control features which is vital for preventing cyber threats, such as malware, phishing, etc. Essentially, A DNS-level blocker cannot effectively block any advertising that shares a domain with content. And, there will probably be no chance for DNS-based filtering software to handle this in the future.

Professional Advice

To protect your network against advanced cyber threats with L7/Application filtering capabilities, you can easily build your own next-generation firewall (NGFW) at home by installing Zenarmor on one of the best open-source firewalls. You can run it even on a fanless mini PC.

Zenarmor is a plug-in that upgrades your open source firewall to a NGFW in a matter of seconds.

Some of the available features are: Application control, User based blocking, Web/Content Filtering, Enterprise-grade Network Analytics, Policy-based filtering, Ad Blocking, Real-time Cloud Threat Intelligence, Active Directory Integration, Cloud-managed central policies and many more.

You can try Zenarmor Free Edition forever free on your open source firewall.

2. Can't Block All ADS

Unfortunately, AdGuard cannot block all advertisements on the internet to protect and comfort you. Because security solutions that depend on DNS-based filtering cannot prevent some advertisements, such as:

• Twitch and YouTube ads

• Twitter, Instagram, Facebook sponsored posts

3. Some sites have started using software to detect AdGuard being used.

There is an annoyances filter that helps get rid of the blocker detection on AdGuard Home Settings.

If, after turning on this filter and clearing the browser cache, you still get this notification.

It is advisable to send a complaint to the filter developers and they will fix this problem.

AdGuard Settings > Support > Send feedback > Missed Ads.

AdGuard Home vs AdGuard DNS

AdGuard Home and AdGuard DNS are both products from AdGuard that are intended to improve online privacy and security. However, they serve distinct purposes and provide varying levels of control.

While AdGuard DNS is a cloud-based DNS service that prevents the installation of ads and trackers at the DNS level, AdGuard Home is a network-wide software that is self-hosted and is designed to block ads and monitor users. It functions as a DNS server that is under your control.

AdGuard Home provides a wide range of customization options, such as the capacity to monitor network traffic, construct custom filtering rules, and block specific domains. However, AdGuard DNS is easy to use and has less customization. AdGuard's servers can be accessed by modifying the DNS settings of your device or router. Minimal configuration is necessary. Although it offers a high level of ad and tracker blocking, it provides fewer customization options than AdGuard Home.

AdGuard Home offers local network protection providing protection for all devices on your local network, such as smartphones, IoT devices, and smart TVs. It has advanced functionality such as parental controls, secure search enforcement, and comprehensive statistics on blocked requests. On the other hand, AdGuard DNS is suitable for users who desire a rapid and straightforward method of ad blocking that does not necessitate self-hosting or extensive configuration.

In conclusion, AdGuard Home is appropriate for users who desire greater control and customization over their network's ad blocking and privacy settings, whereas AdGuard DNS is an ideal choice for those seeking a straightforward and user-friendly solution.