How to Hide Other WiFi Networks When Connecting with Your Computer

Plus how to show them again

If there are multiple WiFi networks in your area, you’ll see all of them when you try connecting to your own. A list of unnecessary networks—especially ones that are secured and that you’ll never connect to anyway—can quickly become cluttered and annoying to see.

Fortunately, you can hide other WiFi networks so that you don’t see them on your computer. After hiding these other wireless networks, you’ll have clear access to the one (or few) that youwantto see.

Hiding other WiFi networks isn’t permanent. You can always undo these steps to see them again. That’s covered at the bottom of this article.

What Does Hiding a Wi-Fi Network Do?

Hiding other WiFi networks is pretty self-explanatory: you’ll be unable to see the network. When you choose a WiFi network to connect to, any network name matching the one you block will not show up in your list of available networks.

Hiding WiFi networks only works onyourcomputer. In other words, what you’ll do when you follow the steps below is stop them from being listed with the other WiFi networks; other people around you can still see them and connect to them.

Blocking a WiFi network will not alert the owner and it isn’t illegal or unethical. Again, you’re really just preventing yourself from seeing it.

Hiding other WiFi networks doesn’t actually stop the wireless signals from reaching your area. If you want to block nearby WiFi networks because you’re trying toboost weak signalscaused by interference, a better option would be to change the WiFi channel. AWiFi channel scanneris helpful in identifying which channels nearby networks are using.

How To Hide Other WiFi Networks

Windows doesn’t let you hide WiFi networks through a handy graphical user interface. As nice as it would be to be able to just right-click a network you want hidden and click a hide/block button, that isn’t what we have available to us.

Instead, you have to run a few commands through Command Prompt. It’s a pretty straightforward process if you follow the steps carefully.

As you can see, all the wireless networks your computer could connect to right now are listed.

Note: Windows is sometimes bad at identifying all the nearby networks. If you’re looking for the SSID of a network that you’ve seen before but that you aren’t seeing right now (maybe due to weak signal strength), use a WiFi scanner likeWifiInfoViewto compile a more comprehensive list.

The response should beThe filter is added on the system successfully.

If there are several that you want hidden, you can run a different command to add multiple networks to the block filter at once.

This is definitely a time saver, but please know that if you continue with these steps, you’ll have undo the command if you ever want to see other networks again, like if you move your laptop to another location or change the SSID to your network.

How To Undo The Commands & See The Networks Again

These are the relevant netsh commands for unhiding the networks:

What About Hiding Your Own WiFi?

If you’re trying tohide your own network from your neighbors, blocking your router’s SSID from yourself isn’t the answer. However, disabling SSID broadcast on your router, and securing it with a strong password, are. Those are just two of the best ways tosecure your WiFiand stop unwanted people from getting on.

Unless your next door WiFi sniffers are actually knowledgeable on tech and security and can spoof their MAC address, you can also turn onMAC address filteringto further secure your network.

Founder of Help Desk Geek and managing editor. He began blogging in 2007 and quit his job in 2010 to blog full-time. He has over 15 years of industry experience in IT and holds several technical certifications.Read Aseem’s Full Bio

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