2y ago

YSK: you can setup pihole on any old rooted android (5.0+) device

I just discovered this and it works fantastically on any old / unused android device you might have lying around, I was shocked at how easy it was, all the instructions are there, once you have it running all you need to do is set your router DNS settings to your pihole IP address and presto! Ads and trackers are gone!

https://github.com/DesktopECHO/Pi-hole-for-Android

42 comments

Take the battery out if you can to avoid lithium fires.
Old batteries on constant charge... I worry about this kind of thing.
- This is where fair phone and framework laptops shine. So easy to take the batteries out.
  
  Not to take away from what you're saying but old phones and laptops are very likely to have easily replaceable batteries as well.
- I removed the battery but now I can't get the fucker to turn on lol
  
  Most mobile devices won't work without batteries. The best way to work around this is to supply it with 4.2V (anything between 3V and 4.2V will do) over the battery connector.
- I have an old Nexus running as a weather station. I just bought a WiFi controlled plug for the power supply so it switches on and off continuously
  
  Can I ask what kind of setup you have there? In terms of software etc..
  
  Thanks for the tip. Got a tablet running HA and thus plugged in 24/7. Just ordered a smart plug to schedule the charging.
- Good point, I'll have to look into that
  
  You might also be able to turn on Battery Idle Mode, although it's not supported on every device.
- Is there any modern day android phones that work without the battery. I feel like they'd probably run POST checks to make sure there's a battery inside. Maybe fairphoness?
  
  The FP3 requires a battery at least. Ironically the device will actually still turn on and be usable if you removed ALL the modules besides the display module 😅 and of course the mandatory battery
Good concept but the WiFi latency and the processing speed would I'm sure slow down your browsing experience.
Cool though!
- Running a pi-hole doesn't require much juice. It's a fancy DNS server, not a router. First gen raspberry pis were pretty weak and even those things didn't even break a sweat.
  
  Another person who doesn't know what they are talking about
- I believe you can do Ethernet over USB c on some devices.
- Oh for sure. I think this is for a very niche user base: People who know about PiHole but don't have a pi/linux box but do have an old Android phone. It's definitely a strange but cool project.
- I haven't seen any notable issues yet, a lot of people use a wireless pi zero to do the same thing so as long as you aren't running a state of the art gaming rig (which i'm not) I think it'll be fine
  
  Your client hardware wouldn't matter tho. State of the art or whatnot of a gaming rig would be fairly low. In sure most modern mobile phones create more DNS requests these days compared to a Windows machine and steam. It's the configured software on the hosts that will dictate how much traffic your devices will get. A lot also cache by listening to the TTL. There will be some form of additional latency but your average Joe won't probably notice.
- I'm not sure about that. The average consumer router is fairly underpowered but is still capable of handling the needs of most home networks.
  
  Wifi adds latency. Adding 30-300 ms of latency will noticeably affect your browsing experience.
  
  I don't think you know about what you're talking about mate
Oh shit. Something to use that old galaxy s4 I still have for. Been wanting to set up a pihole, but didn't want to buy a raspberry pi just for that.
On should have a look on the energy saving behavior of the device, as android tends to shutdown processes occasionally. Which is pretty bad for a DNS server IMHO
- Sure it does. But you can also tell it to put some processes in a top priority list.
- Yeah I'll keep an eye on it and see how it goes, should be alright though I turned the battery optimization off
Looking good
Nah, just install Blokada from fDroid. And use that old smartPhone for maybe an AlfredCamera surveillance. But the noBattery mod is useful anyway.
- I hear you, but I'm pretty happy with how this is working out, the advantage here is that it blocks ads and trackers for the whole network so it works on my wife's devices without her having to do anything (which she wouldn't anyway)

42 comments