Why am I seeing "Your network settings prevent content from loading privately" in the mail apps after updating Pi-hole?
After a recent update to my Pi-hole server, I'm now seeing the warning "Your network settings prevent content from loading privately" above email messages in the Mail apps in iOS/iPadOS 15.x and macOS v12 (Monterey) when I'm connected to my home Wi-Fi, preventing me from using the "Protect Mail Activity" feature in iOS 15.
Recent versions of Pi-hole automatically sink hole requests to two key Apple domains (mask.icloud.com and mask-h2.icloud.com) to prevent the Apple Private Relay feature from bypassing Pi-hole. Due to this, the "Protect Mail Activity" feature in iOS 15 may not work when connected to a network using a Pi-hole server.
In iOS, the "Protect Mail Activity" feature is found under Settings → Mail → Privacy Protection. In macOS, it's found under Mail → Preferences → Privacy.
To resolve this, add the BLOCK_ICLOUD_PR=false setting to your Pi-hole server's pihole-FTL.conf file using the following steps:
- SSH to your Pi-hole server
- Run the following command:
sudo nano /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.conf - Append the following setting to this file and save the file:
BLOCK_ICLOUD_PR=false - Either restart your Pi-hole server, or just restart the DNS Resolver service with
pihole restartdns
Pi-hole documentation: BLOCK_ICLOUD_PR=true|false (PR #1171)