24

KitKat had the Settings > WiFi > Advanced WiFi option to set the priority as shown.

This isn't present on my Nexus Lollipop and Marshmallow devices. I see there is an App available, but I'd like to know if there is some onboard way I missed to manage these, and if not, what the thinking was behind its removal.

enter image description here

3
  • Did you ever find a solution? Or have you tried one of the apps?
    – lebolo
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 11:56
  • 6
    The app I found worked well: play.google.com/store/apps/…, but I was more interested in finding out why it was removed. Commented May 19, 2016 at 20:01
  • 3
    Why was this removed? Seems essential almost, to me anyway
    – osullic
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 14:31

4 Answers 4

3

This works on my CyanogenMOD 13 device, which I have come to believe should work on Lollipop and Marshmellow devices as well:

In your Wi-Fi settings, tap the overflow icon, select "Saved networks". Tap the overflow icon again, disable "Automatic priority". You can now re-order your networks by dragging the signal icon up or down.

Let me know how/if it works for L & M!

4
  • 8
    I'm on stock Nougat and on the saved networks screen it only lists the wifi names with no icon and no overflow icon for Automatic priority settings.
    – Marlon
    Commented Sep 3, 2016 at 11:22
  • I have a Nexus 4 and a Moto E both on CM13. I can get to the setting to disable Automatic Priority as you describe, but when disabled can't reorder the list, I was expecting a long press to initiate dragging but that's not the case on either of these handsets. Did I miss something? Commented Sep 3, 2016 at 19:08
  • Strange, a straight-away drag should do the trick. I did notice that dragging didn't always work on the right side of the icon, for some reason. Grabbing the icon in the middle works for me though. I'm running a One with CM13.1.2 Bacon. I was in dev mode but I tried and it also works for me with dev disabled.
    – Ecchi-Alex
    Commented Sep 4, 2016 at 14:30
  • on my Sony Xperia Z1 Compact I can't shift the entries; clicking an entry brings a pop-up allowing me to "forget" this entry. Long pressing brings a different a pop-up allowing me to disable auto-connect for this network. Commented Sep 13, 2017 at 14:11
3

This is not exactly ordered prioritization, however I found I was able to give preference to one SSID over another by using the data usage setting. By setting HomeWiFi as Unmetered and FreeCableProviderWifi as Metered my phone effectively prioritizes my home network. This solved my problem so I hope this solution helps other even if it doesn't directly answer the question

1

I realize this is an old post, but looking for something else I stumbled upon this:

On a rooted device you can manually edit the wpa_supplicant.conf file, usually stored in data/misc/wifi. Use a standard text editor.

In this file all saved networks are described in structures like

network={
  ssid="network-name"
  other_key=other_value
  priority=priority-value
}

Higher values in priority mean higher priority. Priorities don't have to be unique. Only if you know that you have multiple stored networks for the same location you should consider giving them different priority values like 0 for the least wanted network and 9 for the most wanted one; you get the idea.

Tools:

There are also some tools available for rooted phones that can help you here. One that I use is GravityBox offering a busload of very helpful tweaks and tools for your phone. You need to have the XPosed framework (>> http://repo.xposed.info/) installed to use GravityBox (>> http://repo.xposed.info/module-overview, then search for GravityBox; be sure to pick the version suitable for your Android version)

There are other tools as well but I can't say anything about them. My opinion is: be careful with tools that are abler to fiddle with sensitive data; if they can change priorities they also can read the network passwords stored in wpa_supplicant.conf...

0

I was trying to achieve this on stock Nougat 7.1.1 on a Nexus 5x. I edited the properties in the /data/misc/wi-fi/wpa_supplicant.conf file using a text editor. It worked perfectly. You need root access to edit this file however.

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