Abstract

• The default interface of Pi-Gap is fairly plain with fundamental graphs.
• The LCARS theme presents a Star Trek-inspired full overhaul of the content material blocker’s UI.
• Remember, themes do not change any of the performance of Pi-Gap, simply the best way the software program seems.

When you’ve change into uninterested in the default theme of Pi-Gap, there’s a straightforward method to change that. When you did not know, Pi-Gap truly has a kind of theming engine. Whilst you used to need to manually set up them, the LCARS theme now comes baked in, and here is what all it entails.

What’s Pi-Gap?

When you’ve by no means heard of Pi-Hole, it is a piece of software program that sometimes runs on a Raspberry Pi, however you possibly can actually run it on any Linux-based system comparatively simply. In case your system helps Docker (even Home windows), you possibly can technically run Pi-Gap, although you will have the perfect expertise and fewer technical challenges on a pc working Linux of some type.

The aim of Pi-Gap is content material blocking. The kind of blocked content material can embrace something, together with some advertisements, but additionally particular web sites, domains, and far more. You should utilize Pi-Gap to make sure that grownup web sites are blocked on the DNS stage in your community, for example. One thing else Pi-Gap can do is present you what web sites are being visited essentially the most. I discovered that my community, for some cause, was nonetheless making calls out to a selected server that I did not count on it to be calling out to anymore. So, I blocked the area to forestall these calls from being made.

One other objective of Pi-Gap is to serve up native domains as DNS data. If you’d like storage.native to level to your storage server, for example, you possibly can arrange an A file in Pi-Gap after which any system utilizing Pi-Gap as your DNS will redirect to your storage server. It could possibly additionally function as a DHCP server.

Pi-Gap can be nice for including additional safety to your house community. Utilizing the usual DNS choices on most ISP-provided routers can enable the ISP to see what web sites you are visiting. Utilizing Pi-Gap will get round that by appearing as your personal DNS server, then forwarding requests to different DNS servers down the road, bypassing your ISP completely.

Pi-Gap Seems to be Fairly Plain Out of the Gate

The default Pi-Gap interface is fairly unassuming proper off the bat. It comes with a darkish mode that is actually fairly first rate (enabled by default for me, nevertheless it could be as a result of my system is all the time darkish mode).

Out of the field, Pi-Gap merely provides you normal graphs and pie charts of blocked (or allowed) domains on the primary interface. It is lots of shiny colours combined with a darkish background in darkish mode or a lightweight background in mild mode. However, general, there’s not a lot happening with the UI.

This could be a professional to some individuals who prefer it easy. Or, for individuals who like slightly extra happening, it may not be fairly sufficient to maintain you . That is the place themes are available.

Themes Can Utterly Change How Pi-Gap Seems to be and Feels

Prior to now, you’d need to manually set up Pi-Gap themes to make use of them. Nevertheless, since Pi-Gap v5.21, the first third-party theme for the content material blocker has truly been baked into the primary installer. This consists of the latest Pi-Hole v6.

As a substitute of getting to manually configure the LCARS theme for Pi-Hole, you merely navigate to Settings > Internet interface > Themes and select the look you need. There are a number of totally different choices right here. A lot of the decisions are simply coloration modifications for the default theme of Pi-Gap or choices for high-contrast should you want that. Nevertheless, the Star Trek LCARS theme utterly modifications how Pi-Gap seems and feels.

For the uninitiated, LCARS stands for “Library Pc Entry/Retrieval System,” which is a pc system used within the Star Trek universe. So, for the Trekkies on the market (or these of us who simply desire a totally different Pi-Gap expertise), enabling the LCARS theme will deliver you proper aboard a Starfleet vessel.

The one different factor to notice is that there actually aren’t many different third-party themes for Pi-Gap outdoors the LCARS one. I do want there have been extra theme choices, like one thing from The Avengers, for example. Nevertheless, proper now your decisions are mainly the inventory theme or LCARS, so take your choose.

One factor to notice is that the developer of the LCARS theme additionally has a Picard theme that appears to not be accessible in Pi-Gap v6 as a inventory choice. If you’d like what the designer calls a darkish mode for LCARS, then try the Picard theme GitHub repo which lays out the directions for putting in it.

Themes Don’t Change How Pi-Gap Capabilities, They’re Nonetheless Enjoyable

Themes in Pi-Gap are visible solely. There’s zero performance change by enabling the LCARS theme. Nevertheless, it does completely change how the content material blocker feels. You will nonetheless have entry to the identical statistics and data as you do with the default Pi-Gap theme. Actually, the graphs do not actually even change in coloration all that a lot.

The primary issues which might be overhauled and extra enjoyable with the LCARS theme embrace the scrolling textual content on the prime to the brand new colours and shapes down the aspect. This enables Pi-Gap to tackle a complete new look, resembling the computer systems from Star Trek.