How to Connect to a Hidden Wi-Fi Network on Your Android Phone

Android Smartphones For Dummies

You have the ability to connect to hidden Wi-Fi networks on your Android phone. Some wireless networks don’t broadcast their names, which adds security but also makes accessing them more difficult. In these cases, follow these steps to connect to the hidden Wi-Fi network:

Open the Settings app and choose Wi-Fi.
Tap the Action Overflow and choose Add Network.

The item might be titled Add Wi-Fi Network. Some phones may use an Add (plus sign) icon as the Add Network action.
Type the network name into the Enter the SSID box.
Choose the security setting.
Type the password.

The password may be optional. You may want to consider using password-less public networks.

Tap the Save button or Connect button.

Obtain the SSID, security, and password information from the girl with the pink hair and pierced lip who sold you coffee or from whoever is in charge of the wireless network at your location. And you are well on your way to saving on data usage.

SSID stands for Service Set Identifier. It is not considered a valid acronym for use in Scrabble, despite its pitiful 5 points.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.