I've had my PiHole for many years now and had firmly entered the "I forget that it's there" phase of the lifecycle. But I've had to tinker with it a few times recently, and from those interactions I really think that this feature (and a couple of similar ones) are badly missing...
My scenarios were the following:
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New TV entering my network. I maintain my personal blacklists on Github and updated my TV list to sort out Samsung (in addition to LG). No problem (I assumed), but when I came to look at the Interface, it told me that a number of my domains were "Invalid" because I had used RegEx syntax! The only way to use these is individually!!! That meant when adding the list to my "TV" Group, I had to separately attach each regular expression to the correct Group from the Domains page (i.e. remove from Default and add to TV) manually for each one. Slow and annoying and now my list has to be maintained in two places!
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My mum came round and wanted to use WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook (all firmly blocked on my network). No problem I thought to myself, I can create a new Group for her (Social Media Allowed), add another list to my Github that is a whitelist and then add the domains to that. This time, there's no whitelist option for Adlists (voted for that issue separately), so each and every one of those rules had to be added manually (and painfully assigned to the correct, single group). Many were also regexp whitelists. Very slow and annoying and I can't see at a glance what I'm doing from Github either to update them.
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A friend came round and wanted to show me his new product and this meant needing access to various domains such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Bugsnag and several others that were all naturally blocked on my network... Again began the painful process of manually adding these one at a time and assigning them to a new Group (Development). Again, managing such a list (or lists) on Github would be massively easier.
From these small tasks, I can certainly say that there is a good argument for supporting lists of the 4 main task types:
- Exact Blacklist (exists)
- Regex Blacklist (this issue)
- Exact Whitelist (voted)
- Regex Whitelist (didn't see an issue, but it should also exist)
The Adlists page could simply have an extra select box with these options. Appropriate warning labels could be added to ensure users know the risks.
I understand the issue of compromised lists for whitelisting, but there are those of us who maintain their own lists carefully and are denied such functionality for no really good reason. The software obviously supports all cases already anyway, the only difference is in the user irritation in having to manually enter the details one at a time!
These lists would also allow me to share my complete lists with friends and family without having to go on a copy and paste mission with detailed instructions and irritation for them to achieve the same goals.
Please consider adding them all!!