Wi-Fi Matic turns your wireless connection on or off automatically

WiFi is one of the biggest power drainers on mobile devices when enabled.

Up until recently, I turned WiFi off manually whenever it was not needed. This included before I went to bed, but also when I left the house, work, or another location where I used it.

While that worked most of the time, it happened that I forgot to turn it off, which resulted in unnecessary power drainage.

I have been using Wifi Auto-Off for some time to automate this as much as possible.

The Android application can be configured to turn WiFi on whenever the device gets unlocked, and turn it off when the screen is off for a set period of time, and when the device has not connected to a network for at least a given time interval.

Wi-Fi Matic review

Recently, I switched to Wi-Fi Matic instead. It is a similar application, but offers more functionality and customization options than the other app.

Basically, it remembers all WiFi networks the phone has been connected to, and will enable or disable WiFi whenever you enter or leave the connectivity range.

What's great about this is that it is not using GPS or location-based services to determine whether known WiFi networks are available or not. Instead, it uses network cell identifiers to pinpoint the location of the device, and since it links connected networks to those identifiers as well, it can determine when you are in range, and when you are not.

So, WiFi is turned on or off based on past connections to networks, and the location that is retrieved from cell identifiers.

This alone works well for me most of the time. When I leave the house or another location, then WiFi gets turned off automatically once I'm away far enough, and turned on back when I return.

There are situations however where this won't work. Say, you are using WiFi at home. It would not be turned off for example when you go to bed. You can however configure a deactivation and reactivation time in the app. Say, to turn it off at midnight and back on at seven in the morning.

Besides what has already been mentioned, the app supports a couple of additional features that you may find interesting.

First of all, it keeps a record of all known (that means connected at least once) WiFi access points. For each, it is possible to disable auto-activation and auto-deactivation of the WiFi connection. If you prefer to turn it on or off manually for a specific AP, you can configure the app to let you do so right here.

And if you do not like the idea that wireless access points are remembered, you can turn off that feature in the preferences as well.

The advanced preferences offer a couple of other features that you may be interested in. Here you can enable the activation of WiFi connections when there is no mobile coverage,disable mobile data automatically while connected to WiFi, or set a disconnection timeout that disables WiFi connections.

Verdict

If you use WiFi regularly on your Android device and tend to forget to turn it off at times, you may want to give this app a try to save battery and time to manually turn it on when you are in reach of a known wireless network.

Now Read: Use WiFi Analyzer to optimize your WiFi connection

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