Make your internet faster while ensuring your privacy.
You may have heard that the best April Fools’ joke this year wasn’t one at all: Cloudflare, a service that protects websites (including this one) from malicious acts like Denial Of Service Attacks (DDoS), launched its own consumer DNS service with the extremely memorable IP address, 1.1.1.1. What is DNS? Here’s a good summary, courtesy of Cloudflare itself:
DNS is the directory of the Internet. Whenever you click on a link, send an email, open a mobile app, often one of the first things that has to happen is your device needs to look up the address of a domain. There are two sides of the DNS network: Authoritative (the content side) and Resolver (the consumer side).
Every domain needs to have an Authoritative DNS provider. Cloudflare, since our launch in September 2010, has run an extremely fast and widely-used Authoritative DNS service. 1.1.1.1 doesn’t (directly) change anything about Cloudflare’s Authoritative DNS service.
On the other side of the DNS system are resolvers. Every device that connects to the Internet needs a DNS resolver. By default, these resolvers are automatically set by whatever network you’re connecting to. So, for most Internet users, when they connect to an ISP, or a coffee shop wifi hot spot, or a mobile network then the network operator will dictate what DNS resolver to use.
Chances are, your DNS resolver is provided by your ISP, which then has access to a list of every website you visit. ISP-based resolves are also notoriously slow, which can affect the speed at which web pages load.
Google has, for years, provided its own super-fast consumer DNS resolver at the addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Now, with Cloudflare entering the game, we thought we’d show you how to change the DNS on your Google Wifi.
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How to change your DNS resolver on Google Wifi
All of your Google Wifi administration is done on your Android phone, through the excellent Google Wifi app.
Open the Google Wifi app.
On the home screen, tap Networks & general to enter the network settings.
Tap Advanced networking.
Tap DNS.
- By default, Google Wifi uses Google’s own DNS, but also makes it easy to change it to either your ISP’s, or a custom DNS.
If you want to change to Cloudflare’s DNS, tap Custom.
Under Primary server, enter 1.1.1.1.
Under Secondary server, enter 1.0.0.1.
Tap Save.
That’s it! Now your network’s DNS will use Cloudflare’s privacy-focused resolver instead of Google’s. If you want to change it back, simply follow these instructions and revert back to Automatic.
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