Help center

Header

Top left: Status display

Shows different status messages:

Status: Current status of the Pi-hole - Active (), Offline (), or Starting ()
Temp: Current CPU temperature
Load: load averages for the last minute, 5 minutes and 15 minutes, respectively. A load average of 1 reflects the full workload of a single processor on the system. We show a red icon if the current load exceeds the number of available processors on this machine (which is )
Memory usage: Shows the percentage of memory actually blocked by applications. We show a red icon if the memory usage exceeds 75%

Top right: About

GitHub: Link to the Pi-hole repository
Details: Link to Jacob Salmela's blog with some more details, describing also the concept of the Pi-hole
Updates: Link to list of releases
Update notifications: If updates are available, a link will be shown here.
Session timer: Shows the time remaining until the current login session expires.

Dashboard

On the dashboard, you can see various Pi-hole statistics:

Summary: A summary of statistics showing how many total DNS queries have been blocked today, what percentage of DNS queries have been blocked, and how many domains are in the compiled ad list. This summary is updated every 10 seconds.
Queries over time: Graph showing DNS queries (total and blocked) over 10 minute time intervals. More information can be acquired by hovering over the lines. This graph is updated every 10 minutes.
Query Types: Identifies the types of processed queries
Forward Destinations: Shows to which upstream DNS the permitted requests have been forwarded to.
Top Domains: Ranking of requested sites by number of DNS lookups.
Top Advertisers: Ranking of requested advertisements by number of DNS lookups.
Top Clients: Ranking of how many DNS requests each client has made on the local network.

The Top Domains and Top Advertisers lists may be hidden depending on the privacy Settings on the settings page

Note that the login session does not expire on the dashboard, as the summary is updated every 10 seconds which refreshes the session.

Query Log

Shows the recent queries by parsing Pi-hole's log. It is possible to search through the whole list by using the "Search" input field. If the status is reported as "OK", then the DNS request has been permitted. Otherwise ("Pi-holed") it has been blocked. By clicking on the buttons under "Action" the corresponding domains can quickly be added to the white-/blacklist. The status of the action will be reported on this page. By default, only the recent 10 minutes are shown to enhance the loading speed of the query log page. All domains can be requested by clicking on the corresponding link in the header of the page. Note that the result heavily depends on your privacy settings (see Settings page).

White- / Blacklist

Add or remove domains (or subdomains) from the white-/blacklist. If a domain is added to e.g. the whitelist, any possible entry of the same domain will be automatically removed from the blacklist and vice versa.

Regex blacklisting is supported (entering ^example will block any domain starting with example, see also our Regex documentation). You can still whitelist specific domains even if they fall under a regex pattern.

You can white-/blacklist multiple entries at a time if you separate the domains by spaces.

Disable / Enable

Disables/enables Pi-hole blocking completely. You may have to wait a few minutes for the changes to reach all of your devices. The change will be reflected by a changed status (top left)

Tools → Update Lists

Will download any updates from the third-party ad-serving domain lists that we source. By default, this command runs once a week via cron (Sunday at 01:59).

Tools → Query adlists

This function is useful to find out what list a domain appears on. Since we don't control what the third-parties put on the block lists, you may find that a domain you normally visit stops working. If this is the case, you could run this command to scan for strings in the list of blocked domains and it will return the list the domain is found on. This proved useful a while back when the Mahakala list was adding apple.com and microsoft.com to their block list.

Tools → Tail pihole.log

Live tailing of the raw Pi-hole log.

Settings

Change settings for the Pi-hole

Networking

Displays information about the interfaces of the Pi-hole. No changes possible.

Pi-hole DHCP Server

Using this setting you can enable/disable the DHCP server of the Pi-hole. Note that you should disable any other DHCP server on your network to avoid IP addresses being used more than once. You have to give the range of IPs that DHCP will serve and the IP of the local router (gateway). If the DHCP server is active, the current leases are shown on the settings page. IPv4 DHCP will always be activated, IPv6 (stateless + statefull) can be enabled.

Upstream DNS Servers

Customize used upstream DNS servers + advanced settings for DNS servers. Note that any number of DNS servers may be enabled at a time.

Query Logging

Enabled/disable query logging on your Pi-hole + provide option to flush the log

API

Change settings which apply to the API as well as the web UI

Show permitted domain entries: Toogle permitted queries in Query Log + Top Domains on Main Page
Show blockes domain entries: Toogle blocked queries in Query Log + Top Ads on Main Page
Privacy mode: Replace IPs in query log with "hidden"

Web User Interface

Other settings which affect the webUI but not the API of Pi-hole

System Administration

Apply system-wide actions like restarting of the server

Authentication system (currently enableddisabled)

Using the command

sudo pihole -a -p

and entering a password to be set, one can enable the authentication system of this web interface. Thereafter, a login is required for most pages (the dashboard will show a limited amount of statistics). Note that the authentication system may be disabled again, by setting an empty password using the command shown above. The Help center will show more details concerning the authentication system only if it is enabled

Login / Logout

Using the Login / Logout function, a user can initiate / terminate a login session. The login page will also always be shown if a user tries to access a protected page directly without having a valid login session