Siri Shortcuts for Pi-hole

Like everybody, I have been spending more time at home in 2020 due to Covid-19 and this made me realize that I should invest in my home network for better connectivity. I figured out the hardware part with a mesh system from AmpliFi but it is not all. While I am working on to improve my network, I also wanted to fulfill my long-term desire to have Pi-hole.

If you don’t know Pi-hole, it is a network-wide ad-blocking solution. Instead of installing ad-blocking software and plugins to each of your devices, you host Pi-hole in your network and configure every other device to use Pi-hole as their DNS. Since Pi-hole blocks ads even before they are requested, it even increases page-loading speeds.

If you would like to understand why you might need Pi-hole, be sure to check this blog series: What Really Happens On Your Network? Find Out With Pi-hole

Once I configured Pi-hole as my DNS and whitelisted some services, I thought everything would work as before but that was not the case. I have started to observe weird behavior with some apps and games. I could easily disable Pi-hole from its web interface but sometimes, especially while playing Fifa, I am too lazy for that. This inspired me to make a small Siri shortcut to enable/disable Pi-hole easily. You can download it from the link below:

Download Pi-hole Manager & Stats from RoutineHub

If you like it, you will probably like my second shortcut to easily Whitelist/Blacklist websites. You can get it from here too:

Download Pi-hole Whitelist & Blacklist Manager