Wi-Fi Assistant

How to Use Android’s Wi-Fi Assistant to Keep Your Phone Safe on Public Networks

If you aren’t using Android’s “Wi-Fi Assistant”, you should. It automatically secures unsafe public wireless networks by using a Google VPN, so attackers can’t access your data.

Wi-FI Assistant was originally released with Project Fi, but now it’s available for all Nexus devices running 5.1 and above (in these countries). If your device has it, there’s no reason not to turn it on now.

What Is Wi-Fi Assistant?

Public networks are inherently insecure. It’s simple for evildoers to use things like packet sniffers to pull your data out of the sky while it’s transmitting—they just need to be connected to the same network as you. Anything that you send can be detected, like passwords or other private information. So that network at the coffee shop isn’t very safe to connect to–unless you have a VPN.

Wi-Fi Assistant is Google’s way of combating this. It’s a service that detects open public Wi-Fi networks, then connects to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) managed by Google, routing all of your traffic through a private, digital tunnel. Since the VPN is encrypted, your data is protected from potential attacks. This way, you can treat many open Wi-Fi networks the same way you could treat your mobile connection or home network—feel free to log in, order things, or do whatever else you want. Your data is as safe as it can be.

Of course, it doesn’t work on all public networks, so you need to be able to quickly and easily tell when you’re connected to Google’s VPN. Fortunately, Android already has a way to show that you’re connected to any VPN: a key icon shows up next to the Wi-Fi icon. At one glance, you know that you’re connected and everything is good to go. It’s all very straightforward and simple.

How to Set Up Google Wi-Fi Assistant

Like I said earlier, Wi-Fi Assistant is only available on Nexus devices running Android 5.1 or higher. It’s also region locked to the US, Canada, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, and the UK. If both of those requirements are met, read on.

Once Wi-Fi Assistant is available on your device, it may notify you once you’re connected to a public network. But you don’t have to wait for it—you can enable it yourself beforehand.

First, jump into the Settings menu. Pull the notification shade down a couple of times, then tap the cog icon.



From there, scroll down to the “Google” entry. Tap it.



Close to the bottom of the list there’s an entry titled “Networking.” That’s what you’re looking for.



The Networking menu is short and sweet: there’s a toggle for Wi-Fi Assistant, along with an “Advanced” setting. Go ahead and toggle Wi-Fi Assistant first—we’ll look at the Advanced menu in a moment.



Once Wi-Fi Assistant is toggled on, a warning of sorts should pop up, basically telling you what the service does. Read over it if you want, then tap “Got it.”



That’s that; Wi-Fi Assistant will do its thing for you from now on. Whenever you’re connected to a network that Google Wi-Fi Assistant wants to secure, a notification will show up.



In case you’re curious about the “advanced” section, there’s only one thing in this menu: the option to let Wi-Fi Assistant manage saved networks, so in the future it will automatically connect to networks that you’ve already used. I can think of no reason to turn this feature off, so let’s leave it alone. I mean, you can disable it if you want. It’s your phone, after all.



And that’s pretty much that.

When Wi-Fi Assistant was first released, it only worked with open networks that it automatically connected to, making is less than useful. Fortunately, Google addressed that issue early on, and now Wi-Fi Assistant will also work with any open network. A notification will show up in the shade asking if you want to let Wi-Fi Assistant do its thing, and you’re off.