That’s a really hard problem to solve. But my advice, and what was working for me last time I tried, was using the Pi-hole as an exit node and forcing as much traffic through it as possible. The only downside to this is that your Pi-hole dashboard will be less interesting because your devices will show as the Pi-hole itself. If you’re already doing that, then my only guess is getting obsessive about domain blocking until it stops, and even that will have its limits.
RethinkDNS is a great option unless you already have something in place that you want to use as well.
For example, I have a pi-hole and a server that I’d like to use 24/7. There’s a few ways to do it, but I’m an idiot and need a simple, hard-to-ruin method. So I use the pi-hole as an exit node with TailScale
The fingerprint sensor doesn’t work most of the time, the light sensor thinks its in my pocket when its in my hand (and thinks that its in my hand when its in my pocket), the battery started draining rapidly within a year of purchase, and much more. Is there an Oxygen release for my phone? When I checked about a year ago, all I could find was an unofficial Lineage release that seemed sketchy
I’m kinda in the same boat as you. There’s a Windows bloatware uninstaller (I forget the name) that strips many features you don’t want. And I’ve used BCuninstaller to forcibly remove things I didn’t want. Outside of that, you can use your own router with a strict Pi-hole to see a lot of the Microsoft telemetry getting blocked. Not saying it catches all of it, but it works for me
There’s a script on github (don’t have the link right now) for an automated whitelist. I was expecting it to break some things or end up useless, but it was the perfect addition for me Edit: https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist
I used to be annoyed by an old Samsung “smart” TV ('15 or '16 model). Most things didn’t work on it, yet it kept demanding my data and playing ads constantly. So I built my first pi-hole, it stopped most of the ads but broke the TV in the process. Long story short, I went down every rabbit hole I could and no solutions were found. Granted, different brand and era so maybe you’ll have better luck…but the solution for me was simply to ditch the apps altogether