How to hide other Wi-Fi networks when connecting to Wi-Fi on your computer.

If there are multiple Wi-Fi networks in your area, you'll see them all when trying to connect your device to your Wi-Fi network. An unnecessary list of networks, especially those that are secure and that you never connect to, can become cluttered and annoying. Fortunately, you can hide these Wi-Fi networks except the one you're currently connected to, so you don't have to see that long list anymore. To learn how, please read the following article.

Picture 1 of How to hide other Wi-Fi networks when connecting to Wi-Fi on your computer.

When you click on the Wi-Fi icon in the notification area on your computer, you'll see a list of wireless networks within your connection range. With modern routers available on the market, the Wi-Fi signal is very strong and covers a considerable area. Therefore, you'll have a list of Wi-Fi networks that you can see but not use. The good news is you can hide them. However, hiding other Wi-Fi networks is only temporary. You may have to repeat these steps every time you use your computer.

Table of Contents:
1. Why hide Wi-Fi networks? 2.
How to hide Wi-Fi networks .
3. How to undo and display hidden commands .
4. What about hiding your own Wi-Fi network ?

1. Why hide your Wi-Fi network?

Without further explanation, hiding other Wi-Fi networks means you won't see them when you click the Wi-Fi icon on your computer anymore. When you select a Wi-Fi network to connect to, any network names that match the one you've blocked will no longer appear in the list of available networks. Hiding Wi-Fi networks only works on your computer. In other words, what you do when following the steps below is prevent them from being listed with your Wi-Fi network. Others can still see and connect to them.

Blocking a Wi-Fi network won't alert the owner, and it's neither illegal nor unethical. Hiding a Wi-Fi network doesn't actually prevent wireless signals from reaching your area. If you want to block nearby Wi-Fi networks because you're trying to boost a weak signal due to interference on your own network, it's better to switch to a different Wi-Fi channel.

2. How to hide other Wi-Fi networks except the one you are currently connected to.

It would be great if you could just right-click on a network you want to hide and click the hide or block button, but Windows doesn't allow you to hide Wi-Fi networks through a convenient user interface. Instead, you have to run a few Command Prompt commands . This is a fairly simple process if you carefully follow these steps:

- Open Command Prompt as an administrator by typing cmd in the Start Menu search bar. Right-click on Command Prompt from the search results and select Run as administrator. If you are using Windows XP, you can open Command Prompt directly from the Start Menu without needing administrator privileges.

- Enter the following command: netsh wlan show networks

Picture 2 of How to hide other Wi-Fi networks when connecting to Wi-Fi on your computer.

- As you can see, all wireless networks that the computer can connect to will be listed.
- Identify the Wifi network you want to hide and note its SSID. In the example below, the name of the Wifi network that thuthuat.taimienphi.vn wants to hide is HTC_9EF2 .
Note: Windows is sometimes very bad at identifying all nearby networks. If you are looking for the SSID of a network that you used to see, but now don't, then use a Wifi network scanner tool like WifiInfo View to get a more complete list.
- Open Notepad or other text fields, paste the following command into it and replace HTC_9EF2 with the name of the Wifi network you want to hide.
netsh wlan add filter permission=block ssid="HTC_9EF2" networktype=infrastructure
- Go back to Command Prompt and enter the modified command. You can do this by right-clicking on an empty space and selecting Paste . The filter is added on the system successfully will appear in Command Prompt.

Picture 3 of How to hide other Wi-Fi networks when connecting to Wi-Fi on your computer.

That's it, the specific Wi-Fi network will be hidden.

Picture 4 of How to hide other Wi-Fi networks when connecting to Wi-Fi on your computer.

- You need to perform similar steps to hide each Wi-Fi network as desired.
If there are too many Wi-Fi networks to hide, you can run another command to add more networks and block them all at once. This saves a lot of time, but note that if you continue with these steps, you will have to undo the command if you want to show those networks again.
- Add the Wi-Fi network you want to see/allow with the command: Replace NETWORKNAME with the name of that Wi-Fi network.
netsh wlan add filter permission=allow ssid="NETWORKNAME" networktype=infrastructure

- Block all other networks:
netsh wlan add filter permission=denyall networktype=infrastructure

3. How to undo commands and display hidden commands.

The steps are similar to the netsh command used to hide Wi-Fi networks.
- To identify which SSID has been blocked if you've forgotten: netsh wlan show filters

- To unblock a specific Wi-Fi network: `netsh wlan delete filter permission=block ssid="NETWORKNAME" networktype=infrastructure"` (replace NETWORKNAME with the Wi-Fi network name).
- To unblock all Wi-Fi networks: `netsh wlan delete filter permission=denyall networktype=infrastructure`

4. So how about hiding your own Wi-Fi network?

If you're trying to hide your own Wi-Fi network, blocking your router's SSID from yourself isn't the answer. Instead, disable broadcast SSID on your router and protect it with a strong password. These are just two of the best ways to secure your Wi-Fi and prevent unwanted access. Additionally, you can also enhance security by regularly changing your Wi-Fi password .

Unless the people secretly using your WiFi live next door and are really tech-savvy and able to spoof their MAC addresses, you can also enable MAC address filtering to add an extra layer of security to your WiFi network.

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