I’m slowly switching from Apple to Linux (3yrs now) and from iPhone to Android (soon) and I’m looking to edit the hosts file to block ads. On the old Mac, Win and Ubuntu I simply edit the hosts file and add the IP block list from the human curated effort at someonewhocares. I find it more efficient and faster than using an actual blocker plugin, a surprising number of sites don’t even show an alert that ads are blocked (compared to when I use a plugin to block ads).
Anyway, I’m about to setup a new Android phone and wanted to know if anyone has experience or recommendation for the most effective (and trustworthy) method to edit the hosts file on an Android smartphone.
I looked at a few apps (Total Commander, VPN Hosts etc) but they all look sketchy across the board. I have an account with strongvpn (8yrs now) for vpn access but they don’t seem to have any type of service to curate a hosts file on their end (I did suggest it but they never replied).
I did find personaldnsfilter when I looked into it last year but again I’d like some feedback from others if they’ve used it and trust it.
Thanks!
EDIT:
personaldnsfilter is opensource:
… and it seems they use openvpn to create the vpn connection (if I understand what I’m reading correctly):
What you’re looking for is AdAway. Of course you need root on Android to modify the hosts file. If you don’t / can’t manage that, an always-on VPN style adblocker is the way to go. I would recomend Blokada in that case.
I tried this a while ago and something didn’t work right for me, can’t remember what though.
I settled on NetGuard. The version on the PlayStore doesn’t have ad-blocking though but F-Droid is your friend.
For more details see here:
F-Droid is now flagging BlokAda as doing all sorts of tracking, so I started trying alternatives. NetGuard is absolutely terrible. Not only do you have to do all the setup listed in the readme, but it still won’t block the ads most apps use, there’s a whole other procedure you have to go through to block doubleclick & g.ads that you’ll only find out about when you go through the troubleshooting steps when you realize you’re still seeing ads. For ease of use, I give NetGuard a zero. Could be easily improved by the developer linking to a settings file that everyone could just download and import on first use to shorten the setup tutorial to about 3 steps, or something like that.
Now I’m trying DNS66 from F-Droid, which is far more user-friendly and straight-forward. Don’t mind the name, it isn’t (just) a DNS changer… Much easier to use, and after a couple weeks, seems to be working well.
The key thing that NONE of these apps instruct you to do (prominently, up-front) is: once the VPN is enabled, navigate to your VPN settings, long-press and change to “Always-On VPN” so it starts at startup.