Hey Siri. Block Reddit.

tl;dr: I made a Homebridge plugin for NextDNS that creates virtual switches to toggle denylist entries.

Jump to Getting Started

The Problem

I recently noticed that I had been wasting lots of time mindlessly browsing Reddit during the day and was looking for a way to block it. I already point all of my devices to NextDNS for DNS level ad-blocking and figured I could use it to curb my Reddit habit as well. NextDNS makes this easy by allowing you to add specific domains to a “denylist”, resulting in DNS queries for those domains to return as non-existent.

The problem is: I’m lazy… and toggling those rules through the NextDNS dashboard takes a few clicks. When I genuinely need to access Reddit, I don’t want the hassle of logging in and clicking around.

My laziness led me to a fun weekend project: a Homebridge plugin for NextDNS that lets me enable and disable blocked domains using Siri or the Apple Home app. The result is homebridge-nextdns.

The Solution

Homebridge is an open-source platform that allows you to integrate a wide variety of non-HomeKit devices and services into Apple’s HomeKit ecosystem. With this plugin installed, you can expose specific domains in your NextDNS configuration as virtual switches in HomeKit.

For example, I keep Reddit blocked by default. The plugin gives me a HomeKit switch called “Reddit Block” and when it’s toggled on, Reddit is blocked. When I toggle it off, Reddit is unblocked again. That means I can simply say, “Hey Siri, turn on Reddit block” and it just works. (To really get the title of this post to work, you’d have to set up a shortcut that listens for “Unblock Reddit” that toggles the switch).

Getting started

If you already run Homebridge you can search for nextdns in the Plugin section of the UI or run npm install -g homebridge-nextdns.

Configuration requires 3 items:

1. Your NextDNS API Key which can be obtained at the bottom of: https://my.nextdns.io/account
2. Your NextDNS profile ID that you want to configure via HomeKit. This is found in the URL when viewing one of your profiles: https://my.nextdns.io/IDHERE/setup
3. A list of domains you want quick toggles for.

For more information here are links to the repo and npm page:

• GitHub repository: https://github.com/jtokoph/homebridge-nextdns
• npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-nextdns

Final thoughts

This project started as a personal experiment and as a bit of a joke, but I suspect others who use NextDNS for productivity, parenting, or network management might find it useful too. If you’re looking for a way to integrate NextDNS domain control into HomeKit, give homebridge-nextdns a try.

Feedback and contributions are welcome on GitHub.