How to stop WiFi auto-turning on?

For others who might be having a similar issue and would like to keep the WiFi password sync feature on, here’s what’s worked for the last two hours (fingers crossed)…

1. On the device you want to stop from connecting, first connect to the WIFi network you don’t want connected
2. Then go Settings > WiFi and Click the ‘I’ icon next to the network you don’t want connected
3. Under ‘Auto-Join’ switch it to off
4. Go back to Settings > WiFi and switch-off WiFi

I don’t agree that ‘Auto-Join’ should override the overall WiFi setting and turn WiFi back on after explicitly turning it off but hopefully this method will work.

Cheers, Ben

Thanks for the reply.

IdrisSeabright wrote:

How are you turning it off? Are you going to Settings>WiFi?

Correct, we're going Settings > WiFi > and sliding the switch to Off

We also have Settings > WiFi > Auto Join Hotspot > set to 'Never'

And Settings > WiFi > Ask to join Networks > is set to 'Ask'

IdrisSeabright wrote:

I'm a little confused by the fact that you start out talking about iPads but switch to iPhones. Do you have both? Are you using some sort of shared Apple ID?

Correct, we work at Expos about 20 times per year and use our iPads for the POS system - and obviously use iCloud accounts. So my Mac, iPad and iPhone all use my Apple ID and my partner's Mac, iPad and iPhone all use hers.

IdrisSeabright wrote:

What do you mean by "WiFi Network Sync"?

There's an iCloud feature where WiFi network passwords can sync between devices using the same AppleID. That way, you don't have to re-enter passwords on different devices. It's very useful.

However, this is supposed to be a password-only feature. I don't understand why Apple would want it to override an explicit user action like turning-off WiFi. And I'm not sure it's the culprit or if this is an unrelated bug. Just thought I should mention it incase it's relevant.

Either way, we're experiencing an expensive ongoing issue where our phones keep turning on Wifi all by themselves, then chewing through expensive Expo data reserved for our iPad POS system.

Hope that makes more sense.

Cheers, Ben