What should I do when my phone will not connect to wifi?

Phones cache network details, and a stale cache is by far the most common reason a phone alone cannot join a network everything else can. Forgetting and rejoining rebuilds it, which is why that is step one rather than a last resort.

What you'll need

• Your phone
• The wifi password
• Router access (optional)

Step by step

1. Check whether other devices can connect.If nothing can, the problem is the router. If only this phone cannot, it is the phone. This decides everything that follows.
2. Turn wifi off and on again on the phone.Ten seconds. It re-scans and re-negotiates, and it occasionally is all that was needed.
3. Forget the network and reconnect.Settings, Wi-Fi, tap the network, Forget. Then select it again and enter the password. This clears the stale cached configuration.
4. Check aeroplane mode and any VPN.Aeroplane mode left on blocks wifi entirely on some phones, and a VPN that has failed can make a working connection look broken.
5. Restart the phone.A full restart clears the network stack. Worth doing before anything more involved.
6. Restart the router.Unplug for thirty seconds. Routers sometimes stop issuing addresses to a particular device until they are cycled.
7. Check whether the router has run out of addresses or blocked the device.In router settings: the connected-devices list, DHCP address pool, and any MAC filtering or parental controls that could be blocking it.
8. Reset network settings on the phone as a last step.iPhone: Settings, General, Transfer or Reset, Reset Network Settings. Android: under System, Reset options. It erases all saved wifi passwords, so have them to hand.

Tips

• 'Connected, no internet' means the phone joined the wifi but the broadband is down. That is a router or line problem, not a phone one.
• A network that connects everywhere except one room is a coverage problem — the phone is holding a weak connection rather than failing to join.
• Public wifi that will not work often needs its sign-in page. Open a browser to any plain http site to trigger it.

Common mistakes

• Resetting network settings first — It wipes every saved wifi password on the phone. Forgetting the single network fixes most cases with no such cost.
• Assuming the phone is broken — Stale cached network settings are far more common than hardware failure, and cost nothing to rule out.
• Not checking whether other devices work — It is the single most informative test and it takes ten seconds.

Questions people ask