“Apple is finally fixing the worst thing about WiFi,” Andrew Griffin writes for The Independent. “It’s an experience all too well known to anyone who uses the internet in public: you connect once to the WiFi at a coffee shop or somewhere else, your phone learns the network, and then attempts to connect you to it every time. But usually you’re not in good distance of the network or it requires a login that you no longer have.”
“iOS 11 attempts to fix that problem by spotting WiFi networks that are proving troublesome and stopping phones automatically connecting to them,” Griffin writes. “If a phone learns that a certain network doesn’t tend to work, it will disable auto-join.”
“The potential problem with the feature is that it appears only the phone can decide if a network is bad or not,” Griffin writes. “That means that networks that are actually fine could be turned off, and vice versa.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you don’t want to connect automatically, turn off Auto-Join via Settings > Wi-Fi, then tap the “i” next to the network name. Make sure that Auto-Join is off.
The MacDailyNews Take is nonsense: for most of these networks, switching off Auto-Join and Auto-Login is not even offered. (I’ve never figured out which ones allow this and which don’t; presumably something to do with the authentication method.)
Also the “Forget This Network” command is completely useless.
When I walk into my home my iphone/ipad (8 out of 10 times ) wants to join an Optimum hot spot that is atleast 300 feet from me and not autoconnect to my router that is 10 feet from me. And yes, I’ve “forgotten” the hotspot listing. And no, haven’t called up my cable company. Ideas?
Hmmm, never had that problem.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202831
Seems your device’s ‘forget’ is not working properly or there is another setting/App that is auto-connecting to any strong signal.
The known wifi list actually has a priority order. You can change the order and make sure your home network is at the top of the list. Search online for the steps to follow.
Thanks. Interesting. Will look into!
If people stop connecting automatically, all my coffee shop fun will be over!
Bizarre that this is even worth mentioning – it’s happened to me maybe twice in the last decade.
Meanwhile, the most glaringly obvious WiFi issue that Apple for some reason has never addressed, is a simple option to join a network. Why in the WORLD isn’t there a popup list of networks in the control panel? We still have to manually open the settings app and click on WiFi to see the networks? When joining new networks is something most iOS users do every single day — it’s bizarre.