What You Actually Want

Someone searching for Pi-hole without a Raspberry Pi has usually settled on the outcome and not the hardware. The outcome is ad, tracker, malware, and scam domains that stop resolving, across everything on the device, without installing a different extension in every browser.

Three routes get you there. They differ in what they cover and what they cost you in upkeep, so it is worth being clear about which one you are actually choosing.

Route 1: Run It in a Container on a Machine You Own

Pi-hole is not tied to Raspberry Pi hardware. It is server software you host yourself, so a NAS, a home server, an old desktop, or a small cloud instance will do the job just as well.

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  Keeps the strength: every device pointed at it is filtered, including ones you cannot install software on

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  Still infrastructure: the host has to be running whenever anything on the network wants to resolve a name

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  Not a laptop job: a machine that sleeps, travels, or reboots for updates is a poor host for the service your whole network depends on

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  Network setup: you still point your router or each device at the resolver, and revisit that whenever the network changes

If you already have an always-on box, this is a good route and the honest recommendation. If the plan is to buy or repurpose hardware for the job, you have replaced a Pi with a bigger Pi.

The thing to plan for is what happens when the host is down. Everything you pointed at it depends on it to resolve names, so an update that goes badly or a disk that fills up becomes a household-wide outage rather than a personal inconvenience. That is an acceptable cost when the coverage is the point. It is a poor trade when the only device you wanted filtered was the laptop you are reading this on.

Route 2: A Filtering Resolver Someone Else Runs

A filtering resolver in the cloud does the same job on someone else's service. You point a device, or your router, at it, and the filtering happens upstream. There is nothing to host and nothing to keep powered on. NextDNS is the best known of these.

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  No hardware, and no maintenance window to schedule

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  Coverage on every device you configure, including phones away from home

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  Your lookups leave the device to be answered and classified, which is the trade you are making

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  Configuration lives in an account rather than on your own network

The third point is the one worth sitting with rather than skipping. Moving the resolver off your network is what buys you the convenience, and it is also the whole of the trade. Whether that suits you is a judgment call about the provider you pick and the policy they publish, not something a comparison table settles for you.

Route 3: Block on the Mac Itself

The third route takes the server out of the picture entirely. SplitTunnel is a native Mac app that works at the DNS layer, handling your Mac's own DNS lookups. It is the same layer Pi-hole works at, applied to one machine instead of a network.

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  Two curated blocklists from the HaGeZi project: Block Ads and Trackers, and Block Malware and Scams. Each has its own switch and both are refreshed daily

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  Your own domain rules sit alongside them, and a rule on a hostname also covers anything underneath it

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  Lookups are processed locally on your Mac. Your queries are not sent anywhere to be classified

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  Nothing on your network to configure: no router page, no host to keep awake, no service to update

A blocked domain stops resolving, so the connection is never made. Rules and list settings survive a reboot and blocking resumes on its own, which is the closest thing to the set-and-forget feeling people like about a Pi-hole.

The Honest Scope

This is the part that decides the whole question, so it goes before the setup steps rather than after them. SplitTunnel blocks on the Mac it runs on. On that Mac it covers every app and every browser, whether an app's traffic is routed through a VPN or connects directly. It does not cover your phone, your TV, your console, or a housemate's laptop.

That is a real difference from a Pi-hole, and it is the reason the first two routes still exist. If the goal was always the whole network, route 1 or route 2 is your answer and no Mac app is going to change that.

When Running It Yourself Is Still the Better Choice

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  You have devices that cannot run blocking software of their own: smart TVs, consoles, connected appliances, a guest's phone

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  You already have an always-on machine, so the container costs you nothing new to keep running

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  You want one place to see what the whole household is resolving, and to allow a single domain when a list breaks something you use

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  You are comfortable pointing your network at a resolver you maintain, and fixing it on the evening it stops working

That last point is not a warning, it is a preference. People who enjoy running their own infrastructure get a better result from Pi-hole than from anything that hides the machinery.

Setting Up the On-Mac Route

Encrypted DNS Applies to All Three Routes

One thing changes nothing about the choice above, because it is identical for every option on this page. A browser or app that sends its lookups to its own encrypted-DNS (DoH) provider is not asking the resolver you configured, so it is not filtered by it. That is true of Pi-hole in a container, of a filtering resolver in the cloud, and of blocking on the Mac.

On the Mac, Strict Mode is the response. Turn on Block Encrypted DNS in Settings and Strict Mode blocks known encrypted-DNS resolvers, so software falls back to the system resolver where your rules apply. It works from a curated list of resolvers, so software hard-wired to one encrypted resolver is still out of reach.

Picking a Route

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  Whole network, hardware already running: Pi-hole in a container on the machine you own

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  Whole network, nothing to run: a filtering resolver in the cloud

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  Just the Mac, no infrastructure, blocking that travels with the laptop: SplitTunnel

There is no prize for picking one. A resolver for the devices that cannot help themselves and an app on the Mac you actually work on is a perfectly reasonable setup, and each covers what the other misses.

What decides it, most of the time, is not the blocking at all. It is whether you want another service to look after. If running your own infrastructure is part of the appeal, buy the Pi or spin up the container and enjoy it. If it was only ever a means of getting ads and trackers to stop resolving on one Mac, the hardware was never the point.