Here’s a handy Android tip published by the How To Geek site on Friday that can help you prioritize which Wi-Fi network to use. This is useful if you live or work near Wi-Fi hotspots that you actually don’t want to connect to, for example.
In the Wi-Fi settings for Google Android, you simply tap the menu button to see more options and choose Advanced Wi-Fi. There you’ll find an option called Wi-Fi Priority; tap it and you can move Wi-Fi networks up or down as you see fit.
How To Geek also recommends enabling the option to Avoid Poor Connections, which makes sense: Why should your phone or tablet struggle to connect to a network with lower signal strength if there are better options available?
Unfortunately, this tip doesn’t seem to work with Android 5.0; at least not on the Nexus 5 that I’m using until my new Moto X 2014 phone arrives.
There’s still an Advanced option available in the Android 5.0 Wi-Fi settings but there are no choices available for Wi-Fi Priority nor avoiding poor connections. It could be that Android 5.0 is smarter and that’s why the functions aren’t there, but based on the networks my Nexus 5 is choosing to connect to, it doesn’t appear so.
I’m thinking that for some reason, Google didn’t carry the options forward in Android 5.0. That’s a shame if so, and unless I’m overlooking the settings, I hope they get added back in a future version of Lollipop.


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