hectorm/hblock

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1981 stars · 117 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

hBlock is a POSIX-compliant shell script that aggregates domains serving ads, trackers, and malware from multiple blocklist sources and generates a hosts file (plus alternative formats) that blocks connections to them. It replaces the system hosts file by default and supports allowlists, blocklists, and scheduled updates via systemd timers.

Use cases

• block ads at the OS level without a browser extension
• block tracking and telemetry domains system-wide
• protect against malware, ransomware, and trojan domains via DNS blocking
• generate a unified hosts file from multiple blocklists
• set up scheduled automatic blocklist updates on a Linux server
• temporarily disable ad blocking to troubleshoot a site

When to choose

• you want system-wide ad and tracker blocking without installing a proxy or DNS server
• you prefer a lightweight, dependency-free shell script over heavy ad-blocking software
• you want to combine multiple blocklist sources into one hosts file
• you run Linux, macOS, or BSD and want simple CLI-based protection

When to avoid

• you need per-device or per-application filtering with dashboards and statistics (use Pi-hole or AdGuard Home instead)
• you cannot modify your system hosts file (e.g., managed or locked-down devices)
• you need HTTPS-level ad filtering or cosmetic ad hiding, which hosts-file blocking cannot do
• you have existing hosts file entries you cannot back up or migrate

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

security privacy cli networking security privacy self-hosted bsd cli cross-platform ad-blocker hosts-file dns-blocking shell-script malware-blocking tracker-blocking command-line linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="hectorm/hblock")