iOS10 WiFi Keeps forgetting hidden network

My wife's iPhone 5s and my iPad Air (both A7 devices) have this problem: they "forget" the wifi network's name (it's hidden) and password and don't auto join it anymore. My iPhone 6 (A8) doesn't have this problem. Weirder still is that my iPad never leaves the house and thus, is never away from the access point's (Airport Extreme 3rd gen) reach.

My wife is usually slow to catch wind of it when it happens, and unknowingly wastes all her cellular data allowance for the month. It's extremely frustrating and has been happening since iOS 10, I think. This problem is still alive and kicking on iOS 11.

I've tried everything and nothing has worked. I'm at my wit's end.

iPhone 5 running iOS 10.3.3.

Phone doesn't auto connect to the hidden Wi-Fi. Resetting network and restarting phone do not help. Many have reported this issue. The Apple support team should be able to easily replicate this problem in-house. Then, they can provide the fix or workaround for this issue.

Please help. Resetting the wi-fi setting has no effect. I still have to manually enter SSID every time my iPhone 5s leave the network area or after some period of connection.

Already updated to iOS 11 and there's no change at all regarding this issue.

Gypsyman1040 wrote:

Done this. Did not work. I do not use the cloud. I done not want to use the cloud. Apple need to fix this.

Unhappy user.

Then tell Apple, not the other users in this user-to-user forum: https://apple.com/feedback.

BTW, if you don't use iCloud you have presumably decided not to enable Find my iPhone on your phone, as it requires iCloud. Did I guess correctly?

FYI I have multiple 5s phones and multiple hidden hotspots in my home. ALL phones suffer this annoying problem. I am entering wi fi info every **** day.

I have not done 10.2 yet as I don't know what else will be broken when I "update".

Sadly this thread is 12 pages long and no serious acknowledgment of this real problem that did not exist prior to 10.1 not to mention killing pptp vpn support.

Seems Apple is getting good at killing a good thing.

Same issue here. iOS 10.2 (same problem on 10 and 10.1). I have a hidden network and my iPhone won't connect after being "away from home". Curiously, only entering the network name (but leaving the PW blank) and hitting enter will cause a failure, but then connect when I cancel out.

Issues like this, and the perisisrent problem I'm having in iOS with accepting Bluehist SSL certs is driving me batty.

I am so very close to jumping ship to Android, but having had one of those before I know how horrible they are as well. My Apple products are acting more and more like Android/PC products.

Steve Jobs dies, and Apple's QC goes down the toilet as prices go up. So frustrating.

I have the exact same problem, same sequence knightlie mentions. I have just done the "reset network" fix, but nothing changed except for the fact that all the saved passwords of previously used wifis are gone!! Bad idea TT

any other options???

I have been having the same problem for months. Resetting my network settings did nothing. After months of constantly having to input my Network ID and password, I found this thread and tried Knightlie's solution and it did connect me to my wifi but this is only slightly better than before. It is treating the symptom, not the problem. There needs to be a fix for this. We shouldn't have to use other methods just to connect to wifi that our devices should be connecting to automatically. This is NOT solved, Brenden.

Same here. i do not broadcast the name of my home Wi-Fi SSID. I am connected to my SSID for a while and all of a sudden I notice I am now on LTE. I look at my other devices (PC, Android tablet) and they are still connected. My iPhone 6 just loses my SSID name and passcode. This is extremely annoying and hope Apple can fix it ASAP. This company reminds me of Microsoft. About to trade my iPhone for an Android...

After iOS 10 having this issue with iPhone 5, 5s, 5c, 6 and iPad Air and iPad Air2. Network reset does not help. iPhone SE worked till last week. Very weird. All other non apple devices and old iPhone 4 works just fine. Hope they can fix this issue among many others.

HI, I was having the same problem, I had to manually enter the hidden network details in order to connect, which was very annonying.

I tried resetting the network settings and then restoring the device (happened on an IPad and IPhone), which only lead to more frustration since it didn't solved the issue.

Anyway, since that happened on my personal wifi (yes, I might be a Little paranoid by hiding the network) I decided to take a closer look into the configuration settings and enable wifi broadcast if necessary, however I noticed something regarding wifi security settings: on my router they were setup as WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK AES, however when I connected to it using my iPhone/IPad I selected WEP since I didn't know any better at the time, since it connected I was assuming that was the right setting. After looking into the wifi security options, I then reconnected to the hidden network but using WPA2 option, it got connected and so far it has reconnected automatically (I am testing putting the devices in airplane mode, when usin WEP options it didn't connect to hidden wifi, however now it connects every time so far). I didn't have to enable wifi broadcast after all.

I can see a couple of things wrong with IOS code:

1) Why does using WEP Works for public wifi but doesn't on hidden wifi networks? It should behave the same for both otherwise it is confusing.

2) Why does it allows to connect using the wrong security setting? This also adds to confusión on users that are not experts on networking issues.

Anyway, if that is in fact a bug ion IOS 10.x I hope Apple coders can debug it and fix it.

Hope this helps to anyone still having the same issue as mine, good luck!

My iPhone sometimes connects automatically and sometimes it doesn't. It seems to be getting worse. When the problem first started way back when the update came out, it was once a week or so. Now it is several times a week, sometimes it happens every time I leave the house. My network security settings are correct. Hopefully it stays fixed for you, but keep an eye on it just in case and let us know if it starts happening again. Good luck!

As the only people in this forum are other users, if you want Apple to know about it call them, take it to an Apple store, or use some other means of communication. Start with the Contact Us link at the bottom of this page.

Folks, here's a workaround that worked for both my iPhone 6 and my iPad:

1. Connect to the non-broadcasting network manually (manually type in the SSID and password, other users have described this temporary workaround in this thread).

2. Forget the network. In Settings => Wi-Fi, next to the network name, tap the info button, then tap "Forget This Network".

3. Force a Restart. Hold down the home button and the on/off button at the same time for at least 10 seconds. The device will restart.

4. Settings => General => Reset => Reset Network Settings. The system will reset all of your network settings to the factory default, and will restart.

5. After the restart, in Settings => Wi-Fi, reconnect to the network as though it was a new network, typing in the network name and password. The device should remember the network from now on.

Step 3 might not be necessary since step 4 does a restart anyway, but this procedure worked on both of my devices so even if it's a placebo it helps build confidence. Please reply to let me know if this worked for you.

We were able to put this issue to rest by reloading the affected iPads with iOS 10 via iTunes. We did not restore a backup afterwards. The problem is at long last, GONE!!!

What a mess. Apple may be fine for the general consumer, but it's not meant for the enterprise.

Tim