If you actively turn off your Wi-Fi toggle when leaving your house, you might assume that your Android phone’s Wi-Fi radio is completely powered down. However, for the vast majority of Android devices, this is not true. Even when Wi-Fi is supposedly disabled, the operating system continues to automatically and silently scan for nearby Wi-Fi networks in the background.
Google uses this “Wi-Fi Scanning” feature to significantly improve the speed and accuracy of your phone’s location services. By mapping the MAC addresses of nearby routers, your phone can figure out exactly where you are without having to establish a slow, battery-draining connection to a GPS satellite. Unfortunately, this constant background scanning is a privacy concern for some users, and it slowly siphons away your battery life throughout the day.
If you prefer to strictly conserve battery power and rely solely on traditional GPS and cellular triangulation for location data, you can force your Android phone to completely shut down its Wi-Fi radio when the toggle is off.
How to Disable Background Wi-Fi Scanning
You must turn off the feature buried deep within the Location settings.
- Open the Settings app on your Android smartphone.
- Scroll down and tap on Location.
- Look for a menu called Location Services or Improve Accuracy (this varies slightly depending on whether you use a Samsung, Pixel, or Motorola device).
- Tap on it to reveal the advanced scanning options.
- You will see a toggle switch labeled Wi-Fi scanning (and usually a second one for Bluetooth scanning).
- Turn the Wi-Fi scanning toggle to the Off position.
From now on, when you pull down your quick settings menu and turn off the Wi-Fi icon, the internal radio will actually power down completely. It will no longer search for networks in the background, saving you a noticeable amount of battery life over a long day.