Tailscale exit nodes bring my home ad-blocking with me everywhere I go

Published Nov 14, 2026, 10:01 AM EST João has been covering the tech world for over 7 years, with a heavy focus on laptops and the Windows ecosystem. I also love all things tech and videogames, especially Nintendo, which he's always happy to talk about. Prior to joining XDA in 2021, he worked at Neowin: https://www.neowin.net/news/poster/jo%C3%A3o-carrasqueira/ No one likes dealing with ads on the internet, and while most people are familiar with ad-blocking extensions, blocking ads on your entire network is also increasingly popular, and easier to do than you might think. The problem with that is that once you step away from your home, the ads come right back into play on mobile data. But what if they didn't? That's exactly what you can achieve using Tailscale exit nodes, and it's a lot simpler than you might think. Here's how it works. Pi-hole and AdGuard Home protect your network DNS filtering solves a lot of problems If you're reading this article, you're probably already familiar with network-wide ad-blocking using DNS filters, but it's worth laying out a quick primer. Services like Pi-hole or AdGuard Home can run on a PC in your network, such as a home lab, handling DNS requests for all devices connected to the network. The way it works is that you set up the DNS settings on each of your devices to point to the computer running Pi-hole, which acts as the DNS server. Pi-hole then responds to your DNS requests based on filtering lists you can define yourself. Ideally, you point the router itself to Pi-hole, so the entire network is automatically covered. Some routers may also ship with a service like Pi-hole or AdGuard Home built-in, which makes setup even easier. For most domains, Pi-hole simply forwards your request to an upstream DNS resolver such as Google or Cloudflare, but when you set up filters, any domains covered by your filter lists simply do not get their DNS requests forwarded, meaning the content they would potentially carry never enters your network. By adding lists that specifically target known ad servers, you get an experience mostly free of ads. It's a genius idea, but once you step out of the home, your requests can no longer be forwarded to your Pi-hole server, so instead, they go the usual route and all the ads come back. Tailscale helps you fix that. Tailscale does more than you might think Run all your traffic through your network You may know Tailscale for its primary feature of letting you access your self-hosted services remotely. When you install Tailscale on a device in your network, such as a homelab or a desktop computer, you can also set it up to advertise subnets, specifically the one your computer is connected to. For example, you'd set your machine to advertise the subnet 192.168.1.0, if that's the internal IP range used by your Wi-Fi network. When you set up and sign into Tailscale on another device, and you try to access a service through its internal IP within the subnet you specified, Tailscale routes your traffic through your computer back home to connect you to those self-hosted services. However, all other traffic on your device goes to the respective servers as normal, without going through Tailscale. That is, unless you setup an exit node. The same way you can set a computer to advertise a specific subnet, you can also set it run as an exit node. You can then use Tailscale while you're away to route your traffic through an exit node on your account. When you enable a specific exit node on a device, all internet traffic goes through the machine that's running as an exit node, meaning it's just like you're using the internet at home. So, if you have Pi-hole running in a device at home and you also have an exit node running inside the same network, all of your traffic still goes through Pi-hole, even if you're not at home. That means no ads on any of your devices, no matter where you are. How to set it up It's fairly easy Setting up a device to run as an exit node and then using it is very easy. If you're using a GUI client, such as the official Tailscale client for Windows or macOS, you can set the option to use your device as an exit node right from the system tray menu. Simply right-click the Tailscale icon, choose Exit nodes and select Run exit node (on Windows) or Use this device as an exit node (on macOS). If you're using the Linux client or running Tailscale in a container, you'll need to run this command: sudo tailscale set --advertise-exit-node On Android or iOS, you can find this option under the Exit node menu, under the toggle to turn Tailscale on or off. To finalize the process, you need to go into your Tailscale admin console (on any device), click the ellipsis icon next to the machine you're running as an exit node, and choose Edit route settings. Here, make sure the Use as exit node checkbox is enabled. Once this is all done, any device in your tailner (the Tailscale network) can use that exit node. Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS can find it in the Exit nodes menu I mentioned above. For Linux users, use this terminal command, using the IP for your exit node shown in the Tailscale admin console: sudo tailscale set --exit-node={exit-node-ip} Once this is done, all your traffic will be routed through your exit node, and ad-blocking will be effective on your device, even if you're not at home. Just keep in mind that connecting to an exit node continuously can increase battery usage, so it may be best to use this sparingly if you're on a phone. I'm done with ads Setting up Tailscale to run as an exit node on a network that also has Pi-hole or AdGuard Home is an easy way to enable ad-blocking on all your devices, and I can attest to how well it works and how much more peaceful it is to browse the web on my phone this way. All it takes is a bit of setup, but if you already have Pi-hole and Tailscale, it takes a minute to get this going and the payoff is more than worth it. Tailscale OS Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS Pi-hole OS Linux (self-hosted) Price model Free