So i figured it out after all...It seems that DNS settings under system > settings > general, cannot coexist with the lines we are adding to the custom options in unbound.They both write forward-zones in the unbound.conf and unbound notices duplicates and drops one as far as i can tell.So make sure you don't have manually defined servers elsewhere.
server: tls-cert-bundle: "/etc/ssl/cert.pem"forward-zone: name: "." forward-tls-upstream: yes forward-addr: 45.90.28.0#opnsense01-1a2345.dns1.nextdns.io forward-addr: 45.90.30.0#opnsense01-1a2345.dns2.nextdns.io
With the latest releases of the Unbound plugin, the DNS over TLS configurations works fine with NextDNS and client identification by using the hostname field. I switched from the custom configuration to the plugin once the DOT hostname option was added.
I configured forwarding to NextDNS using OPNSense's Unbound's DOT configuration (Services -> Unbound DNS -> DNS over TLS). With that configuration the only client device that will show up in the NextDNS GUI is OPNsense itself which is the way I wanted it. I use separate tools (Zeek, Influx & Grafana) to track/report on all my internal DNS queries. If you want individual device names to show up in the NextDNS GUI when utilizing a centralized forwarder, I believe you would need to use the NextDNS CLI client on OPNsense.