Allow (whitelist) domains with Algo VPN in DNSCrypt Proxy

DNSCrypt Proxy is one of the tools build into the Algo VPN ansible scripts. It’s great for blocking ads and trackers. I run a privacy friendly analytics tool called Simple Analytics. For developing my tool I need to make sure it’s never blocked in my VPN.

I use the term whitelist because it’s being used within DNSCrypt and because people search with this keyword. I would prefer to call it allowed, allowlist, ignorelist, or something like that.

First navigate to your DNSCrypt settings:

cd /etc/dnscrypt-proxy
ls -la

You will find a file in there called dnscrypt-proxy.toml, open this file:

sudo vi dnscrypt-proxy.toml

It’s a very long file so search for whitelist by hitting the / key. Type whitelist and hit enter. You will see the first hit of whitelist, use n to navigate to this line:

# whitelist_file = 'whitelist.txt'

Remove the # before whitelist_file. In vim you can do this by hitting i for insert and just use your backspace to remove the # . Once you’re done you hit ESC and type :wq enter (write quit).

If something goes wrong you can always hit esc and u to undo.

Now DNSCrypt will look for a whitelist.txt file in this folder /etc/dnscrypt-proxy. Create this file now:

sudo touch /etc/dnscrypt-proxy/whitelist.txt
sudo vi /etc/dnscrypt-proxy/whitelist.txt

The last command opens the whitelist.txt file in vim. Just hit i and type the domains you want to allow and skip the blocklist/blacklist. One domain per line and without any subdomain. For me whitelist.txt looks like:

simpleanalytics.io

Once you’re done you hit esc and type :wq enter.

You now created a list which will allow certain domains to bypass your blocklist. We now need to restart DNSCrypt:

sudo service dnscrypt-proxy restart

And you’re done. You should be able to visit your allowed domains.

Happy coding! – Found a mistake or a typo? Please submit a PR to my GitHub-repo.