
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Aren't Fully Disabled When Off in iOS 11 Control Center - tambourine_man
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208086
======
lathiat
This is actually fantastic, I am really happy about this.

Two main reasons (1) If you disable Wi-Fi its re-enabled when you goto a new
location. Very often I disable wifi to temporarily get off a bad network in an
area, and then curse when I get home and stream a 1GB video over 3G

(2) Much more user friendly for initiated actions

(3) You can still fully disable it by going into settings, but the quick-off
is more like you expect.

Great work, Apple.

~~~
Joeri
iOS can be configured to automatically switch to LTE if it detects you’re on a
low quality wifi connection. No need to turn off wifi for that.

~~~
redditmigrant
The problem here is that a lot of people are on limited data plans. So if wifi
is poor in one corner of my home, I dont want to accidentally chew up half my
monthly data allowance.

~~~
JohnBooty
This absolutely happened to me once, at work.

Which was really funny, because I was downloading craploads of music
_specifically_ before I left the office so I wouldn't chew up my mobile data
cap.

I didn't know the "switch to 4G if the wifi is bad" option even existed, much
less was enabled.

------
paulbeattie
Not a fan. Off is off simple as that. It’s also really confusing to have two
actions one in control centre the other in settings behaving in a different
way but no cue to say they do.

Another “feature” irking me on iOS 11 is the disabling of flash or the
flashlight/torch below 15% battery. If I want to use the torch or flash then
I’ll decide if there’s enough battery left

~~~
runholm
> If I want to use the torch or flash then I’ll decide if there’s enough
> battery left

Lithium batteries are worn a lot by high amperage when they are already close
to empty. They are protecting the battery from wearing out too fast.

~~~
tudorw
If I am in the dark, and really need to use that torch, the batteries are the
least of my worries.

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electic
For anyone that is running into this. The quickest way to get into settings so
you can turn these radios off is to force touch the settings icon. Once you do
that, you will see the different radios in the menu. You can simply tap into
it and toggle the radio off. This, of course, assumes you have force touch
enabled iPhone.

For what it is worth, this is a big privacy violation. I am really surprised
you can't at least force touch on the control center and turn these things
off. I hope someone at Apple is reading this and adds that back in.

~~~
eklavya
I can't seem to find a way to disable except in going to settings > wifi Where
do you see these options in the force touch menu?

~~~
electic
If you force touch the settings icon on your home screen, you will see Wifi,
Bluetooth, etc. Just tap the menu item to go right to the settings screen.

~~~
eklavya
Thanks :)

------
excalibur
> For the best experience on your iOS device, try to keep Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
> turned on.

For the best protection on any kind of device, try to keep unnecessary attack
vectors turned off.

------
jimjimjim
what ever happened to the principle of least astonishment?

people are currently used to disabling wifi meaning disabling wifi.

~~~
acranox
Seriously. This is a neat feature, but completely violates POLA.

~~~
remarkEon
POLA?

~~~
grzm
Principle of least astonishment.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment)

~~~
remarkEon
Ahh thank you.

------
VeejayRampay
Any other brand on the face of the planet:

Poor decision, potential security hazard, drains battery life, contrary to
user freedom, sneaky, you name it.

Apple:

Contrived justification of how this is genius on Apple's part and actually the
behavior you wanted without even realizing it.

------
userbinator
Ironically, 4 hours later, this story also currently on the front page was
submitted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15299165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15299165)

------
dschuetz
I participated in the beta program and I thought of it as a bug first and
reported it. Nothing happened except it turned out a feature in the release
version. Why didn't they integrate "turn completely off" in the long press sub
menu instead? NO, now I need to go all the way to settings and turn it off. I
don't get it.

------
sologoub
I wish they’d also fix the problem of Apple Pencil draining when in bag with
the iPad - it seems to think it’s being used and is trying to transmit to the
iPad. I’ve been turning off Bluetooth to deal with this stupidity, now I have
to turn on airplane mode to actually turn it off properly.

~~~
peterxjang
Not a proper fix, but a workaround is to turn off Bluetooth then immediately
turn it back on. This disconnects the Apple Pencil, which allows it to keep
its charge (for weeks in my experience). With the new iOS update it sounds
like you'll need to turn airplane mode on then off instead, which is a bit
more annoying (but better than leaving airplane mode on the whole time).

------
mikeash
I think the functionality makes a lot of sense. But it sure would have been
nice to indicate what’s going on in the UI somehow. Maybe not reuse the
familiar icons to indicate a new thing? Or, totally crazy idea, labels!

~~~
zaroth
Clicking it could easily turn the icon into a timer, sort of like how apps
show download/install progress. It's WiFi Snoozing!

~~~
batiudrami
This is a feature I would love. Ideally with a prompt "do you want to forget
[current network]?" if you're connected to one because I'm probably turning it
off because it's poor quality or I can't be bothered with the sign in process.

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chrisallick
I believe this is also a ploy to keep people pinging wifi routers. Can't say
for sure, but that was my gut reaction when I discovered this during beta
testing.

~~~
icebraining
What would be the point? If it's for tracking, you can do that without
actually connecting to the networks, just by monitoring passively, like
Android does.

~~~
amigoingtodie
More reliable map data to compete against Google Maps w/ wifi location assist?

~~~
icebraining
Yes, but you can do that without actually connecting to the Wifis, you just
scan passively like Android does.

------
kalleboo
This sucks - I keep it off because as I ride a train it's connecting to every
station wifi and losing it just as quick, completely breaking connectivity.

Perhaps the new TCP multipath stuff will make WiFi Assist work in these cases
but I'm not holding my breath.

~~~
KGIII
Maybe disable automatic joining of random networks? I don't use an iPhone, but
I bet it has a setting for that. There's also the security implication of
automatically joining unknown networks.

Will that help?

~~~
kalleboo
They're not random networks though. Sometimes I do use the station wifi (so
it's in my network list), but that's if I'm parked there for 15 minutes
waiting for a train and want to stream a YouTube channel or download a
podcast. Just not when I'm on the train passing it.

~~~
KGIII
I think another person mentioned a possible solution in a different thread.
Just tell it to not auto-join those specific networks. It's not necessarily
ideal, but it should work.

I believe they gave you directions on how to do it, in the other thread about
the exploits. I'm not really spying, I just happened to just finish reading
that thread and noticed the train similarities.

That should solve it for you. I'd find that behavior maddening. Fortunately,
that's not a likely problem for me.

~~~
kalleboo
Yeah I just saw that comment after I replied here. As you say, not ideal but
it should help at least.

------
newscracker
Having read that KB page, I don't really care for Apple's explanation on this,
but it's really messy from a UX point of view after being used to the previous
way of working. I have the habit of turning off WiFi most of the time to save
on battery usage. I know when and where I'm in a place where selected WiFi
networks are available, and I don't like having the radio on all the time.

I'm not buying new phones every year or getting batteries replaced - so taking
advantage of any and most battery saving techniques (while having the device
usable for my needs) is very important to me.

What's even more annoying is this - if I open an app that may need network
access but cal also work or open up without that, now the device prompts me
with a list of nearby WiFi networks and I have to choose cancel because I'm
not going to connect to some random network! _This is a serious security
issue, IMO._ Many people might inadvertently tap on available WiFi networks
and suffer through password prompts on protected networks or get connected to
some rogue network.

Forcing users to go to Settings to turn the radios off defeats the purpose of
having an easily accessible Control Center for many users.

I seriously believe Apple botched this one, and hope there will at least be
some way to get the old behavior (like it did with the removal and reinstating
of Camera Roll).

~~~
wikibob
Simply turn off "Ask to Join Networks" and you will never see the WiFi popup
you refer to.

I believe having this off is default behavior since at least iOS 9.

[http://osxdaily.com/2012/04/07/stop-iphone-looking-for-
wifi-...](http://osxdaily.com/2012/04/07/stop-iphone-looking-for-wifi-
networks/)

~~~
newscracker
I always had this option off. Now I went into settings and see that it's on.
It's frustrating that an upgrade changes things and also requires the user to
take specific actions to get it back to how it was (after the upgrade, I had
to sign in to the App Store, to Game Center, and a few other things that were
already setup).

------
leowoo91
I always take it to airplane mode to disable all, I don't think any company
can risk that.

~~~
ctpide
Are we sure about this - you can enable Bluetooth and WiFi in Airplane mode -
will this still work as before now?

~~~
submeta
Yes, you can enable both in Airplane mode. Just checked it

------
jasonthevillain
Well, that explains the battery life tanking.

~~~
zwily
Battery life is always bad right after installing a new major iOS release.
Every time. Give it a couple days, it’ll probably be fine. Most of the time,
turning off wifi to preserve battery is more superstition than real.

~~~
kevinchen
In fact, turning off Wi-Fi can hurt battery life. LTE requires more power, GPS
kicks on more often, and if you have an Apple Watch, data transfer is forced
to use Bluetooth which means both devices remain in a high powered state for
longer.

~~~
KaiserPro
Bluetooth is an order of magnitude less power per KB than wifi

~~~
kevinchen
Yes but it’s slow. While your Bluetooth is transferring the data slowly, the
entire rest of the system is burning power while it waits.

~~~
KaiserPro
depends on the sleep states, and how much data is shifted.

------
grendelt
> It's 5 AM local time.

What?! Why???

------
ezequiel-garzon
Huh, I thought it was a bug. Sometimes the volume levels of AssistiveTouch and
Control Center are in sync (iPhone SE) and sometimes they aren’t. I wonder
whether that’s another hidden feature.

------
gnicholas
This is especially problematic because stores track your movements via wifi
[1], even if you haven't connected to any networks. Now I have to go to
Settings to actually turn off wifi and defeat this type of tracking. Terrible.

1: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-
shopper...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-
stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html)

~~~
dovdovdov
One hand gives, the other takes away. :)

------
yladiz
I'm kind of ambivalent to this issue, although I do think it's a regression
that they use the same buttons to accomplish different tasks, and especially
since it's kind of confusing that you think it's off but it's actually not
truly off. I'm hopeful (but know it probably won't happen) that long pressing
or force touching the buttons in the bigger menu from the Control Center will
let you disable instead of "turn off".

~~~
theprotocol
I know it's against etiquette to comment on downvotes, but I wish they would
reply rather than rage-drive-by downvote perfectly reasonable responses like
this.

------
tradesmanhelix
This seems like a pretty heavy-handed violation of the UX Principle of Least
Surprise [1] given how those Control Center buttons have historically behaved.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishm...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment)

------
mrfusion
It would be nice if they made it a different icon like say a wifi symbol with
a little timer on it.

------
m_st
I like this, even though the UI is shit as it lies to me.

The important fact is, if you really want to disable WIFI or Bluetooth, you
can still do so from the settings (not control center). This is mentioned at
the bottom of the article.

------
erwinmatijsen
What’s the reasoning behind connecting WiFi / Bluetooth at 5AM?

~~~
tehbeard
Not burning through limited data plan when a user wakes up in the morning I
think. Maybe also linking back to the Bluetooth speakers by your bed for
alarm/morning tunes.

------
liuyanghejerry
iOS tried to hide file system from you once, which was brought back later. Now
iOS tries to hide wireless hardware from you?

~~~
coldtea
That's the very purpose of software -- to hide the hardware from you.

And the file system never came back -- an abstraction that looks like a file
access dialog came back.

------
NikolaeVarius
This is the same thing that happens in Android by default.

~~~
reustle
No it isn't. If I turn off WiFi from the pull down menu, it stays off.

~~~
dbrgn
Yes it is: [https://www.howtogeek.com/211186/how-to-disable-google-
locat...](https://www.howtogeek.com/211186/how-to-disable-google-location-wi-
fi-scanning-on-android/)

~~~
icebraining
Android scans, but it doesn't connect again just because you walked to another
location or it's 5AM. Auto-connection does stay disabled.

------
DmitryOlkhovoi
"For the best experience on your iOS device, try to keep Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
turned on." Oh really?

