A minimalist hosts-based tool for managing block lists and ad-blocking.
This project uses the excellent and regularly updated Unified Hosts lists from Steven Black.
- It is an extensible, small and simple tool; consisting of only fifty-five lines of code!
- It will block this traffic across all programs running on the system.
- It is written in Rust and hence can be depended upon to be fast and stable.
- It is designed to be easily incorporated into shell scripts to automate or customize its behaviour to your liking.
- A hosts-based block list such as this uses minimal system resources to block unwanted traffic in comparison to a browser extension.
Using Cargo (Rust)
cargo install block-listMore options will come in future!
Just use 'hosts' as the desired list if you only want ad-blocking.
sudo block-list /path/to/hosts your-desired-listBasic usage:
sudo block-list /etc/hosts socialPipe in a custom list:
cat someFile.txt | sudo block-list /etc/hostsOR
cat someFile.txt | sudo block-list /etc/hosts socialAutomatically update Block List at 10pm every day:
Open the root user's crontab file
sudo crontab -eThen add the following line
0 22 * * * block-list /etc/hosts hostsUse Block List to re-route a url to a different address:
Find the address using dig
dig duckduckgo.comCoppy the IP address listed in 'Answer Section' to a file
# A custom Block List
# Re-route all requests from Google to DuckDuckGo
52.142.124.215 www.google.com
52.142.124.215 google.comPipe in the custom list to Block List
cat someFile.txt | sudo block-list /etc/hostsIf successful, this command will append a new list or replace the current list at the tail of the supplied hosts file, eg:
Block List updated! 🔒##
# Host Database
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
# Your list of addresses
1.2.3.4 somehost
...
# Block List
0.0.0.0 some.custom.address.net
0.0.0.0 another.custom.address.xyz
0.0.0.0 some.malware.address.com
0.0.0.0 another.blocked.address.xxx