Using NextDNS with Unifi

Most of the instructions I have found, including NextDNS’ own, were old and outdated. They all seemed to imply you needed to install the NextDNS CLI on the Unifi Gateway.

Luckily I found a post with a much easier solution.

Just wanted to note that there’s no need to be installing NextDNS in the CLI or anything special.

Simply go to your NextDNS account > Setup > Router and scroll down to DNSCrypt. Copy the server name (NextDNS-yourid) and stamp (sdns://…) and paste them into the Unifi Encrypted DNS settings in Settings > CyberSecure > Protection.

That’s it, that is all it takes. Every device with DNS assigned by the Unifi Gateway will have the requests sent via DNS-over-HTTPS.

NextDNS

I’ve been using NextDNS for quite a few years, and even upgraded to the paid plan since 2022, to allow me to add my family under the same plan, instead of creating separate free accounts.
I know a lot of people prefer to self-host their own using Pi-Hole or Adguard locally, however, NextDNS works on all my devices, even the phones, regardless of my location or without having the expose a DNS server. On top of that, in every test I have done online, NextDNS consistently came up on top on the list of the quickest DNS providers - they are likely using a datacenter close to my home in Ireland, and that means I get both speed and ad-blocking on all my devices just by using it as a DNS provider.

Not everything needs to be self-hosted. The convenience is well worth the cost, in this instance.

2026 update

My NextDNS renewal just came up and, once again, my opinion is still that the cost is worth the convenience.

I have never really had any issues with it, no outages, and the analytics show it keeps blocking ads and trackers throughout my devices.
That’s all I could ask for!