Are you familiar with how your iPhone's WiFi and Bluetooth work? Do you know the difference between disconnecting from WiFi and turning it off completely? We explain how wireless connections work on your iPhone.
The control center of our iPhone includes quick access buttons to many of our phone's functions, among which are the buttons for Bluetooth and WiFi, as well as for the mobile data network connection. We use those buttons countless times throughout the day, but I'm sure many of you are surprised at what they really doBecause it's not what most people think.
WiFi and Bluetooth, for much more than you think
WiFi is for much more than connecting to your router, and Bluetooth for more than connecting to headphones. Obviously these are two of its most important functions, but they also serve many other functions such as the readmission of files through AirDrop, location, for the Handoff functionality that allows you to start something on your iPhone and finish it on your HomePod, or on your Mac… There is always a lot of talk about the Apple ecosystem and how well Apple devices communicate with each other, because They do this communication without us realizing it thanks to WiFi and Bluetooth.
Because our devices use these two wireless connections for many tasks, Apple didn't want to put two shortcuts in Control Center to turn them off completely, instead the buttons that we see there what they do is simply disconnect, which is what in the end most people want to do, but leaving the connections available for the other functionalities that we use and that need them.
How the Control Center works
When the buttons are blue, it means that the functions are active and available to connect to known networks or devices. If we press them we will see that they appear in white, which means that have been disconnected, but are still active for other functions:
- AirDrop
- AirPlay
- Apple Pencil
- Apple Watch
- Continuity features, such as Handoff and Instant Hotspot
- Personal access point
- Location
- Unlock with Apple Watch
That is, we will disconnect from the WiFi network to which we were connected, or from the headphones we are wearing, but we will continue to be able to use those functions, such as connecting to our Apple Watch. In fact, these functions they will automatically reconnect the next day, or if you restart the device.
If we want to completely deactivate these functions, we must go to the Settings of the device and within the WiFi and Bluetooth sections, proceed to deactivate them completely with the corresponding button. If we now display the control center we will see that the buttons do not appear blank, but crossed out, confirming that these connections are disabled. In this case there will be no automatic reactivation the next day.
