How many times have you connected to a public Wi-Fi spot only to find out that it’s not delivering that free internet connection you seek? By default, your iPhone or iPad will keep reconnecting to the same Wi-Fi network when in reach, unless you manually remove the network from the Settings app, or disable Wi-Fi when out and about. But iOS 11 will automatically fix this problem for you in the future, which means you’ll no longer have to troubleshoot your internet connection when you need it most.
Even though Apple just released iOS 11 beta 4, this feature had been added to iOS since beta 2 a few weeks ago. It wasn’t widely featured in hands-on demos because it’s very easy to miss:
New in iOS 11: It learns to stop connecting you to crappy WiFi! (like Whole Foods, Starbucks, airport, etc) pic.twitter.com/vz089HWvGW
— Ryan Jones (@rjonesy) July 16, 2017
Apple didn’t talk about it on stage at WWDC, and you really have to pay attention to your Wi-Fi settings menu to discover it.
As you can see in the image above, iOS 11 decided on its own to disable auto joining a network that proved to be unreliable in the past.
It’s unclear at this time how iOS makes these determinations, or how reliable the feature is right now. But it’s just one more iOS trick that will fix your internet issues for you before you have to start wondering whether your current Wi-Fi network is having issues, or whether your cellular data is to blame.
Obviously, the easiest way to fix this problem yourself while you wait for iOS 11 to be released to the public is to forget all the unreliable Wi-Fi networks you encounter in your iPhone’s Wi-Fi settings.
