How to Use the Fast & Private CloudFlare DNS on iPhone or iPad

How to Use the Fast & Private CloudFlare DNS on iPhone or iPad

If youre interested in using the Cloudflare DNS service on an iPhone or iPad, youll find its a fairly easy configuration process to setup your iOS device to use the ultra-fast and privacy-focused DNS service. This tutorial will detail that setup process. If this sounds like Greek, then heres a super quick background: DNS is what associates an IP address (like 1.1.1.1) to a domain name (like Cloudfare.com), you can think of it a bit like a directory service. That lookup and association process takes a small amount of time to complete. Thus, using a faster DNS provider can make DNS lookups a bit faster, and may offer a subtle performance boost to internet usage. Additionally, with CloudFlare DNS, that process is apparently not logged with your IP and the data is not sold or used to target ads, which makes it a bit more private than some other DNS providers and some ISP default DNS. If youre interested in learning more, you can find more info . If some of this sounds familiar to you its probably because we covered , but by request were now covering how to setup the same DNS service on an iOS device like an iPhone or iPad. You can custom configure DNS on virtually every iOS device ever made, so it does not matter what version your particular iPhone or iPad is running. If you have ever then this process will be familiar to you, except of course youll be using the Cloudflare DNS IP addresses. If youre unfamiliar with the steps, here they are: Note: if you have any pre-existing custom DNS configuration, be sure to make note of those settings before making any adjustments. The DNS settings change should take effect immediately and not require any additional action, nor rebooting, but if youre having connectivity issues after making any adjustments then a restart of the device or may be helpful. If you still dont get a connection, make sure the syntax is entered correctly, and if that still fails then delete the entries and go back to your default DNS settings. If youre not sure if you want to use Cloudflare DNS, or you arent sure that Cloudflare DNS will be any faster than your current DNS, you can access a site like to see how the performance is for your general region of the world. Its not going to be faster for everyone, but for some users it may be. Setting and computers, so its worth investigating for many users. As for the privacy aspect of Cloudflare DNS, the company says they will not log IP addresses, sell your data, or use any of that data to target ads. Whether or not that is appealing to you likely depends on your views of internet privacy in general, but it may be of interest to some users. Its not a VPN nor will it anonymize internet usage in anyway, but it may offer some additional privacy during DNS lookups and DNS resolving behavior when using the internet from an iOS device configured to use the service. Of course this walkthrough is geared towards iPad and iPhone users, but if youre on a Mac and the topic interests you, then you can .