In recent years, Google and Microsoft have gone to great lengths to improve user privacy, especially after Apple made privacy a selling point. Google brought the option to change system-wide DNS settings with Android 9, and Microsoft added the option in Windows 10 in 2020. Even Mozilla now enables DNS over HTTPS by default in its web browser. So if you want to protect your privacy on the web, go ahead and enable DNS over HTTPS in Windows 11. It’s a system-wide option, so all communication between your PC and the DNS server will be encrypted. So without delay, let’s see what it is and the steps to enable it.
Enable DNS over HTTPS in Windows 11 (2024)
In this article, we have mentioned the steps to enable DNS over HTTPS (DoH), along with an explanation of what DoH is and why you should enable it on your Windows 11 computer.
What is DNS over HTTPS and why should I enable it in Windows 11?
If you have no prior knowledge of DNS over HTTPS, there is nothing to worry about. Here, we give you a brief explanation about DoH and explain why you should enable it.
When you visit a website, your computer does not know the domain name (such as google.com) of the website. It asks a DNS server using the website’s domain / IP address (eg 142.250.196.78 for google.com) and asks it to point to the correct domain name and then retrieves the result. This communication between your computer and the DNS server has traditionally remained unencrypted. That is changing now.
To be clear, everything you do on a website, such as browsing the website or making a transaction, remains encrypted since it is an HTTPS website. It means that no one, not even the ISP, knows what you did on the website. However, DNS queries are largely unencrypted, and that means your ISP or anyone on the local network can at least know which website you visited.
So now, to bring encryption to DNS queries, the DNS over HTTPS feature has been introduced. Basically, even when you get the domain name from the DNS server, your queries will be encrypted using the HTTPS protocol.
Not only that, with system-wide DNS over HTTPS, all applications and programs in Windows 11 will also use DoH to communicate with DNS. So not just web browsers, DNS communication on your whole PC will be protected. So if you want to enable DNS over HTTPS on your Windows 11 PC, follow the steps below.
How to enable DNS over HTTPS in Windows 11 [EasiestMethod
- Open the Settings app and go to the ” Network and Internet” section on the left sidebar. Then click on “Wi-Fi” or “Ethernet” depending on your internet connection in the right pane.
- Then go to ” Hardware Properties“.
- Here, click on “ Edit” Next to “DNS Server Mapping”.
- In the drop down menu at the top, choose “ Manual” and turn on “IPv4”.
- In the Preferred and Alternate DNS fields, enter your DNS choice. You can check our list of the best DNS servers from the linked article. We are using Google’s DNS server, which is 8.8.8.8and alternate DNS8.8.4.4. There are also popular alternatives like Cloudflare and OpenDNS to choose from.
- Finally, to enable DNS over HTTPS in Windows 11, click on the drop-down menu under “Preferred DNS encryption” and choose the “ Encryption only (DNS over HTTPS)” option. Follow the same steps for “Alternative DNS Encryption”. You don’t need to do anything for IPv6.
- After that, click ” Save” to save your changes, and you’re done.
You have successfully enabled DNS over HTTPS on your Windows 11 PC. All communication between your computer and the DNS server will now be encrypted, and no one will be able to access your DNS queries.
Secure web communication in Windows 11 with DNS over HTTPS
This is how you can enable DNS over HTTPS in Windows 11 to encrypt DNS queries from your computer. As you may know, web surveillance is increasing by the day, and it is absolutely essential that users protect their privacy, especially when it comes to something as basic as a DNS query. Anyway, that’s all of us. In case you are facing network discovery problem in Windows 11, please follow our linked guide to fix the problem right away. And if you have any questions, comment below and let us know.
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