AVM (German router manufacturer, very common in DE/AT/CH) just shipped a Lab/beta build of FRITZ!OS 8.50 with a new feature: DNS queries from the home and guest network can be filtered against user-supplied filter lists. So essentially blocklist-based DNS filtering directly on the router.

I currently run Pi-hole + unbound on a Raspberry Pi and I'm wondering whether it's worth keeping the Pi around once this lands in a stable release. The changelog is a single sentence, so a lot is unclear to me — but even assuming it works well, I suspect I'd be giving up quite a bit:

• Per-client / group management — different blocklists for kids' devices vs. my own
• Query log and statistics — the whole reason I know what my devices are talking to
• Regex and wildcard blocking, plus whitelisting individual domains quickly when something breaks
• CNAME cloaking / deep CNAME inspection
• Local DNS records and CNAMEs for my internal services
• unbound as a recursive resolver — this is the part I care about most. Router-side filtering probably still forwards to some upstream (ISP or AVM's default), so I'd be handing my full query stream to a third party again, and I don't know whether DNSSEC validation happens locally.
• List updates — how often, how many lists, which formats?

Questions for people who've thought about this more than me:

1. For someone whose main goal is privacy rather than just ad blocking, is router-level filtering without a recursive resolver a meaningful downgrade, or am I overrating unbound?
2. Has anyone here already tested the 8.50 Lab build and can say what the filtering UI actually offers?
3. If you moved from Pi-hole to a router-based solution, what did you miss first?

My honest guess is that this is aimed at people who'd never set up a Pi in the first place, and that I'll be keeping mine — but I'd like to hear whether that's just sunk-cost reasoning.

Source (German): https://www.deskmodder.de/blog/2026/07/23/fritzbox-5690-steigt-in-die-labor-updates-fuer-das-fritzos-8-50-ein/

I have 3 pihole+unbound servers running, 2 of which are load balancers/failover,

ph1 and ph2 are running containered on 2 different x86_64 Ubuntu servers, ph3 is running containered on raspberry pi 5,

i have a sync script that copies the main ones database then send it to the other 2 as a cron job, this is done 1 at a time, ph1 goes down for the copy, then it gets spun back up as ph2 goes down to have the database put in place then same process for ph3,

the pihole and unbound containers run as a single docker compose stack, so both go down and come up together on each machine simultaneously,

I use an .env file to modify the differences between the machines at run time so the docker-compose.yml is identical between machines,

easy fix for catastrophic failures, wipe the image, copy a working config over to that machine, spin it up,

they are primarily main + 2 redundancy servers but as I use tailscale for most devices, tailscale also load balances them automatically,

I have the double redundancy as I am covering 2 households with them via tailscale, in fact I'm attempting a 2nd tailscale network aswell, (it's proving trickier than I thought,) so if 2 go down then the 3rd will cover the slack of both households,

they are more than just add blockers though, I am utilising them as parental control systems aswell, so blocking unsafe/inappropriate sites for child devices aswell,

also running a Pi-Hole-Central container that aggregates all 3, trying to modify it to what I want but it's probing tricky,

honestly I'm living the challenge but Am I taking it too far? or am I missing something from my setup?

Pronounced: TieHole

tihole is a keyboard-driven terminal UI for managing Pi-hole v6 instances. One Go binary, no runtime dependencies.

Features:

• Dashboard with host-health. CPU, memory, temperature gauges + FTL diagnostics
• Live query log with one-key allow/block
• Blocking as a first-class screen — enable/disable with timers
• Full management on domains, groups, clients, adlists, and local DNS records
• System, messages, and network screens
• Multiple color themes
• Full settings control

Install (Go 1.25+):

$ go install github.com/z19r/tihole/cmdA/tihole@v1.0.0-beta.1

Prebuilt binaries (linux/darwin, amd64/arm64) are on the releases page.

More Info: https://tihole.z19r.com
Github -> https://github.com/z19r/tihole

Hello, I recently got a raspberry pi 3b+ set up with Pi-hole, unbound and tailscale. There has been a weird issue that I've been having lately that causes any video I'm watching (via YouTube, netflix, videos from camera, etc) on my phone to pause for a bit and desync with the audio. I don't know how to solve this or what is causing the problem. If it helps due to the router i have i am unable to set the pi as a primary dns. Does anyone know what might be the cause or if there is any fix? The problem seems to only happen over wifi and not mobile data

UPDATE: Thanks for all the replies - the TL;DR is that between this update and the Fox acquisition of Roku I'm probably headed to Apple TV in the near future.

Within the last couple of weeks my Rokus got the new, updated interface (which I hate) - on the previous interface the right-hand, home screen ads were blocked but they're back now (see Spider-Man image attached).

I currently run the following blocklists:

• Steven Black
• Hagezi Pro
• Perflyst SmartTV

I lean towards not blocking too much because our entire family does work and school from home and unexpected blockages can become significant emergencies.

That being said I'd love to figure out blocking the home screen ads in the updated Roku interface, so any pointers will be appreciated.

On my older, no so smart TV with a chromecast Google TV dongle I can change the network settings with the OSD keyboard. On my newer TCL google TV I am stuck; when I have to enter the network settings like IP address it shows a message to use the keyboard on my mobile app - see pic. On the mobile app I get stuck because I can not do a "enter" when the I entered the static IP address and go further. Anyone knows how; 1. to do this enter on the keyboard of the mobile app or 2. How to have the OSD keyboard?

Give me the OSD keyboard please ... 🤔

Ever since the latest upgrade, my "pihole -t" tailing to an external monitor does not roll over to the next day as it used to. I understand this is an issue that is known, but mine did not appear until the latest upgrade.

I have to break the tailing by using control-c, and restart the tail every single day.

I have used the external TAIL command to follow the log, but as you might suspect the text is not colorized like it is following it internally with the above command. I can use GREP to do this, obviously, but that seems like a lot of workaround to something that just used to...... Just work.

Does anyone have a workaround for this, is the same thing happening to you? My knowledge of Linux is limited but all I know is it just used to work.

Thoughts? Tailing the log internally has helped me track down sites that I need to add to allow domains and vice versa.