Using a QR Code to Connect to your WiFi Network Quickly & Easily

Here’s a quick tip to speed up connecting mobile devices to your WiFi network – if you want to, that is! When guests come round and you want them to be able to connect to your WiFi network, you can generate and print out a QR code for them to scan with their mobile phone or tablet, and they’ll be connected right away!

By encoding a string of text in the following format, you can then generate a QR code (click link for a free generator) to stick on your wall. So long as your guests have an appropriate barcode scanner installed on their mobile device (I’d recommend this one) it will automatically connect you to the wireless network without you having to fiddle around with inputting settings and passwords.

This is the string of text that your QR code needs to contain for it to become a WiFi network connector:

WIFI:T:WPA;S:your-network-SSID;P:your-network-password;;

T is for Type (of authentication), S is for Service Set Identification (SSID) and P is for Password. You can also add an optional H:true; for if your SSID is hidden.

Note: It doesn’t seem to work if you have a space in your SSID, for some reason. If your SSID does have a space in it, you’ll need to replace the space with a dash or something, and update everything else that uses your WiFi.

Bear in mind that this will allow your visitors to read your password if they so desire, so don’t use the same password for your WiFi as for other things. Also, if your router supports it it’s a good idea to set up a separate Guest network so that folk connected to your Guest network can’t access everything else on your network (NAS, shared drives etc.)

If you’ve found this useful and set it up in your home, let me know in the comments below!