How to Install Unbound on macOS

Unbound is a popular DNS resolver that offers improved security and privacy when compared to typical DNS servers. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation process of Unbound on macOS.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, make sure that you have the following prerequisites installed on your macOS system:

If you do not have these prerequisites installed, you can install them by following the instructions provided in the documentation.

Installation

  1. Open the terminal on your macOS system.

  2. Use Homebrew package manager to install Unbound by running the following command in the terminal:

    brew install unbound
    
  3. Once the installation process is complete, you can start the Unbound service by running the command:

    sudo brew services start unbound
    
  4. To verify that the Unbound service is running, you can check the status by running the command:

    sudo brew services list
    

You should see the status of the Unbound service as started.

Configuring Unbound

After installation, you may want to configure Unbound to suit your specific requirements. The configuration file for Unbound on macOS is located at /usr/local/etc/unbound/unbound.conf.

To edit the configuration file, you can use any text editor of your choice. For example, you can use the nano editor by running the command:

sudo nano /usr/local/etc/unbound/unbound.conf

After making changes to the configuration file, you can reload the settings by restarting the Unbound service:

sudo brew services restart unbound

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to install Unbound on macOS using the Homebrew package manager. We also showed you how to verify the installation and start the Unbound service. Finally, we provided instructions on how to configure Unbound to suit your needs.

With Unbound, you can greatly improve the security and privacy of your DNS requests, making it an essential tool for securing your online activities on macOS.

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