The Ultimate Showdown Making Proton Vpn Nextdns And Adguard Stop Fighting And Join Forces Together
title: The Ultimate Showdown Making Proton VPN, NextDNS and Adguard Stop Fighting and Join Forces Together categories: [VPN, DNS, AdBblocker, Privacy] tags: [PROTON VPN, NextDNS, Adguard] author:
We’ve all been there. You’ve decided to take your digital privacy seriously. You downloaded Proton VPN to keep your data safe from prying eyes, and you meticulously built a fort-knox level ad-blocking profile on NextDNS using all the best AdGuard and OISD filters. You are the absolute ruler of your smartphone’s traffic. You connect to the VPN, flip on your custom DNS, and… boom. Your phone turns into a digital battleground. The VPN app starts crying that it can’t use its custom features. Your ad-blocker suddenly goes on strike. Your battery starts draining faster than a cheap sports car’s gas tank because two different network profiles are aggressively wrestling for control of your device. Why can’t our privacy apps just get along? The good news is, they can. You just have to play therapist and set some boundaries. Here is how to configure the ultimate, bulletproof privacy shield without causing a system-level civil war. The Root of the Drama: Why They Fight By default, both a VPN and a Private DNS service want to be the “tunnel” your phone uses to talk to the internet. If you set up NextDNS at the Android system level (under Private DNS) while running Proton VPN, Proton gets highly offended. It throws up a warning that looks something like this: “Custom DNS is unavailable. Your device is using a third-party DNS…” Translated from tech-speak, Proton is saying: “Hey, I see you’re seeing other filters, and frankly, I’m insulted.” Worse yet, if your VPN uses a protocol like WireGuard, it might just ignore your system settings altogether, meaning those sneaky mobile ads will start slipping right past your defenses anyway.
The Fix: Trick Them Into Working Together To achieve internet enlightenment, we have to make Proton VPN the boss, but force it to use NextDNS’s brain. Here is the 3-step configuration that completely solves the problem.
Step 1: Tell Android to Stand Down First, we need to stop Android from forcing the connection from the outside. Go to your phone’s Settings > More connection settings > Private DNS. Switch it from your custom hostname to Off. Breathe. Your internet is temporarily unprotected, but only for the next 60 seconds.
Step 2: Steal Your NextDNS Linked IPs Now, log into your NextDNS web dashboard. Look at your profile setup tab (right under where you activated those aggressive AdGuard and OISD blocklists). Scroll down to the DNS Servers section. Copy those two beautiful, simple numbers (they look like 45.90.28.249 and 45.90.30.249).
Step 3: Feed the IPs to Proton VPN This is where the magic happens. Open your Proton VPN app and head into the settings. Because you turned off the Android system DNS, the angry warning message is gone! Toggle the Custom DNS switch to ON. Tap “Add new DNS server” and paste your two NextDNS IP addresses right in there. Total Peace and Quiet 🕊️
And just like that, the war is over. By nesting your NextDNS IPs directly inside Proton VPN, you’ve created the perfect hierarchy. Your phone sends all of its data through Proton’s military-grade encrypted tunnel first (keeping your ISP entirely in the dark). Then, the moment that traffic hits the VPN server, it gets aggressively scrubbed by your custom NextDNS AdGuard filters before it ever reaches your eyes. No app conflicts, no battery drain, and absolutely zero ads. Go forth and browse in blissful, uninterrupted privacy!
[To be continue: screnshots will be added]