I have a complicated question. Is there a better way to do this? Is this causing problems with my pihole installation?

[jambo]

@Bucking_Horn

How did you make it block DNS traffic, then?

To do that I have to do this. It's weird but it works.

@Bucking_Horn

You may be able to get around defining that rule exemption if you can set your router as manual DNS server for your iPad

@Bucking_Horn

If you configure your iPad settings manually, it will just ignore Pi-hole. It won’t interfere with Pi-hole’s operation at all.

I'm sorry, I meant to say I didn't think the internet would work if if I set my routers IP as my iPads DNS (I just dont know enough to know whether it would work or not, I'm not doubting you!).

@Bucking_Horn

It is only involved now that you chose to involve it.
I am afraid you have some clean up to do.

That's probably true haha but I'm only saying I think its involved because until I put that rule in the iPad's internet just wouldn't work. And you're totally right; I meant to say I put the rule in /etc/dnsmasq.d/99-custom.conf. I changed it because I wasn't paying attention and he initially gave the wrong location (etc/dnsmasq/dnsmasq.d/99-custom.conf) but apparently he changed it back and I selected the wrong text. Sorry about that.

@Bucking_Horn

If your router would act as DHCP server, you should configure your router to hand out Pi-hole as local DNS server .
If your router wouldn’t allow setting a local DNS server, setting Pi-hole as your router’s upstream DNS server would be one option - or you switch off DHCP in your router and appoint Pi-hole as DHCP server, leaving DNS server config to Pi-hole (which is what you did).

All that is listed in my router is "Domain Name Server (DNS) Address". The way my setup is, I have the aforementioned DNS Address that is set to my pihole DNS (192.168.1.8). The router has its DHCP server disabled and the pihole has its DHCP server enabled so that I can see which devices are doing what.

I will try to figure out how to implement in my router what you suggested. I should probably just get a router where I can implement method #2 and set custom rules to redirect devices that try to bypass the pihole DNS.

Thanks a lot for your help and I understand I can be frustrating; I will try to learn more about how everything works together.