Thursday, February 04, 2016

How-to: Remove out of range WiFi networks for Galaxy devices

*Updated 3/18*
This method won't work in Android Marshmallow or later as Marshmallow won't allow an app edit a WiFi networks created by another app

If you rely on Wi-Fi networks a lot you'll likely add a lot of Wi-Fi networks to your phone over its lifetime.  But the more Wi-Fi networks you add, the more effort Android takes to connect to a Wi-Fi network as it goes through the list of added Wi-Fi networks to see if there are any hidden networks to connect to first before presenting you a list of all Wi-Fi network SSIDs being broadcasted.  In short, you want to keep you saved Wi-Fi network list short so you save battery life when connecting from network to network.

You can normally remove Wi-Fi networks by pressing and holding onto a Wi-Fi network and click on Forget in the popup.  For out of range networks, they would usually appear at the bottom or you would click the "...", click "Saved Networks" and click on the network you want to remove in Android.  But unless you have a Verizon Galaxy S6/S6 edge/Note 5, you may have noticed that there is no "Saved Network" option under "More" in "Wi-Fi" settings on new Galaxy devices running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop - mimicking iOS which doesn't provide visibility to all saved networks.

Sadly you'll need to rely on a 3rd party device to remove those out of range networks.  I recommend Wi-Fi Manager mainly because it doesn't ask for permissions to your device identity and call information or phone ID or location like other Wi-Fi managers and it's free.



 After installing Wi-Fi Manager, click on "Live networks" and make sure it's set to "Known networks". Now you'll see every Wi-Fi network added to the phone, even the out of range networks


To remove a network, click on the network and click "Forget" to remove the network.


If you click on the Wi-Fi network the phone is connected to, it can provide you the Wi-Fi channel, speed, your assigned IP address, security employed, and signal strength as a percentage.

Hope that helps your Galaxy's battery life.  Let me know what your experiences below in the comments.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

To at least see saved WiFi networks (S6 w/Marshmellow - does not have "Settings, WiFi-More, Saved Networks"):

• Settings
• Data Usage
• More
• Restrict Networks

... but will not allow "Forget" from there.

(SamF)

Anonymous said...

On Android 6 even the WiFi Manager method doesn't work. The dialogues appear OK and seem to let you forget a network, but actually nothing happens.
(GeoffW)

Anonymous said...

App is worthless. Doesn't remove any saved wifi connections, just makes them hide for a few seconds then they re-appear.

Unknown said...

I have tried everything to delete all the unwanted wi fi connections on my Cubot GT88 mobile and nothing at all works. I cannot get a forget tab if I hold on those I want to delete, can anyone help because its peeing me orrf as every time I switch wi fi off it switches itself back on again and I get loads of unwanted and bloody annoying aps popping up.
Elvisalan.

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