You Should Probably Turn Off Wi-Fi Assist On Your iPhone. Here’s How

Last Updated on: 29th September 2015, 05:39 pm

Carin and I got our new iPhones over the weekend. So far, even though I’ve hardly scratched the surface of what this thing can do since I’ve largely been concerned with making sure all my apps still work the way I’d like them to, I’m finding the 6S to be pretty great. The call quality is worlds better than it was on our old 4 and 4S phones, and it’s just so fast! Sometimes so fast that it feels like I’ve barely finished double tapping to activate something and it’s already done.

While we were at the Rogers store, the girl taking care of our new contracts was nice enough to warn us about a new feature that Apple built into iOS 9 and has decided to turn on by default. It’s called Wi-Fi Assist, and if you’re not a fan of data overage charges you’re gonna wanna turn it off like right now. Basically what it does is automatically switch your phones internet connection from your WiFi to cellular data when you’re surfing or streaming and it determines that the WiFi signal you’re on is weak. A nice idea in theory, but one that in reality we should be warned about during setups and upgrades and allowed to make our own decision on because most of us don’t have unlimited data plans since we didn’t win the fucking Lotto Max over here, guys.

Rogers lady turned it off for us in the store which was fine and dandy, but since we headed home and promptly reset to factory defaults so we could get everything we’d backed up to iCloud onto our new phones, Apple turned it right back on again. So since I’ve just figured out how to manually turn it off myself, I thought I’d tell you how you can do the same in case you’re in a similar position (there’s a good chance you are if any of this is news to you).

  • Go to settings.
  • But not the WiFi settings, because that would be far too sensible.
  • Instead, go to cellular.
  • Once inside, scroll down about a thousand miles until you find Wi-Fi Assist near the bottom of the screen and make sure it’s set to off.
  • If you’re using Voiceover like I am, it’s way down yonder next to the reset statistics button that comes after that giant list of apps and how much data they’ve been using. Pretty much the last place you’d expect to find it, in other words.
  • Your standard double tap will turn it off if it’s on.

It’s a pretty simple process once you know what you’re looking for, but one that Apple has made needlessly complex and should fix in one of the upcoming bug squashing releases, in my opinion.

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