GUIDE · HOME MODE

What is DNS, and why does my home need a guardian?

Every time a device in your home wants to talk to a service (open a website, load an advert, send something to its maker), it first asks for its name: “where is example.com?” That question is DNS. A server answers it, normally your operator's, and the device connects to the address it gets back.

Why it matters

Almost every device takes that step, not just the PC: the phone, the TV, the console, the speaker, the camera. And they take it hundreds of times a day without you seeing it. Whoever answers the DNS questions sees the complete list of who your home tries to talk to: names, not content, but names that say a lot (ads., metrics., tracking.).

Today that list is seen by your operator, or by Google or Cloudflare if you pointed your DNS at them. Not by you.

What a DNS guardian at home does

GUARDIANA turns your PC into the one who answers those questions inside your Wi-Fi. Every query passes through it before going out to the internet, so:

• You see it: which services each device asks for, with its category (advertising, tracker, telemetry, expected) and one sentence per signal.
• You cut it if you want: a rule of yours makes that name “not exist” for the whole house, or for one device. Never before 24 hours of watching, always with an undo.
• Nothing leaves the house: the guardian is on your PC; there is no server of ours and no account.

For the phones and the TV to pass through it, you tell them to use the PC as their DNS: once in the router for the whole house, or device by device. Those are the other guides in this section.

What a DNS guardian does not see

This matters and has to be said: it sees names, not what goes inside them. It does not see which app asked for each name on a phone. And some traffic goes around it: apps that bring their own encrypted DNS, a VPN, or iCloud Private Relay in Safari. GUARDIANA flags that when it detects it and writes it down in its limits. A DNS guardian is not an antivirus and not parental control: it is the view of who talks to whom in your home, and the power to say no.

Other guides

• What is DNS, and why does my home need a guardian?
• Point the whole house at GUARDIANA (router)
• iPhone and iPad: point the DNS at GUARDIANA
• Android: point the DNS at GUARDIANA

If something in this guide does not match your device, write to hola@guardianagroup.com with the make and model: it is corrected, with the date.