How to Stop iOS Wifi From Turning on Automatically

Apple added Control Center in iOS as part of a new quick menu in iOS 7. On your Apple iPhone or iPad, you can swipe up from any screen and enable / disable various services. One of these services is Wi-Fi. While Control Center makes it quick and easy to manage Wi-Fi and other connectivity options on your iPhone, most people don’t fully understand how it works. This is one of the reasons why users are wondering how their iOS Wi-Fi turns on automatically.

You may have disabled Wi-Fi to use cellular data or save battery time when you are away from a known network. Realizing that turning off Wi-Fi didn’t actually turn it off can be overwhelming how your battery gradually drained and how the Wi-Fi network turned on automatically.

Let’s understand it in more detail.

How Control Center works

The Control Center has been designed as an easy-to-access menu where you can turn on and off a bunch of services like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the torch from anywhere on the screen. Disabling Wi-Fi from the Control Center will only disconnect your smartphone from the connected Wi-Fi network / router for approximately one day. It will not deactivate the Wi-Fi service itself and after 24 hours, the iPhone or iPad will automatically connect to this Wi-Fi network.

Your iPhone will disconnect from the Wi-Fi router or hotspot and temporarily use mobile data. Wi-Fi is always on. You can check it in the settings. Turn off Wi-Fi and open Settings> Wi-Fi to check.

You should notice the message “Disconnecting from nearby Wi-Fi until tomorrow” when you use the Control Center to disable it. This is why your iPhone reconnects to the registered Wi-Fi network even if you have disabled it, or should I say disconnected.

In short, disabling Wi-Fi from Control Center will temporarily disconnect it or only for 24 hours. If you want to turn it off completely, go to Settings> Wi-Fi to turn it off completely. Otherwise, if your mobile data connection is intermittent, the iPhone may fall back on the Wi-Fi network.

Why the Control Center does not turn off Wi-Fi completely

Much thought seemed to have been at the origin of this reasoning. Wi-Fi is used for more activities than just connecting to the Internet and browsing the wild web. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are required to use options such as AirDrop, AirPlay, Apple Watch, Mobile Hotspot and other connected services. Disabling Wi-Fi will interrupt one of these services. This is why disabling the Control Center option to temporarily disconnect Wi-Fi and does not make sense.

Disable Wi-Fi correctly

Use the settings if you want to turn off Wi-Fi for good. This will prevent iOS from activating Wi-Fi automatically later. Go to Settings> Wi-Fi and turn off the option. As noted in the point above, other features that depend on Wi-Fi will also stop working.

Note: Wi-Fi will activate and automatically connect to the registered Wi-Fi network if you restart your iPhone. It doesn’t matter which method you use to turn off Wi-Fi.

Automatic join is disabled until

When you use Control Center to disconnect Wi-Fi, it will not automatically join the network until:

• It is 5 am where you live (local time)
• You restart the iPhone
• You move to a new location
• You connect to a Wi-Fi network from the settings
• You activate Wi-Fi from the Control Center

You now know why your iPhone automatically connects to the Wi-Fi network in the morning even when you turned it off at night. You should activate it, not disconnect it.