- Users can easily share WiFi passwords quickly with Nearby Share.
- Android 12 allowed sharing of WiFi passwords in the form of a QR code.
- It is not sure whether Android 12 will get this feature at its launch.
Sharing your WiFi password with multiple people can become a tedious task. One choice is to tell people the password. But that gives you less power about who and what devices will link to your network, and it also pushes you to use a simpler password. Another choice is to type it in yourself, but you can imagine how annoying it would be to input it on hundreds of computers. But, you can conveniently share your WiFi password in the form of a QR code if you have a phone running Android 10.
Thanks to the Wi-Fi Easy Connect protocol, the onboarding of WiFi devices by scanning a QR code became possible. Although it is a simpler and safer way to add new devices, there are also a few downsides. Fortunately, Google is working on an even simpler way to share your WiFi password. The feature can debut in the forthcoming Android 12 update.
Limitations of the earlier method
The problem with QR code system provisioning is that it involves either physically holding up one’s phone to scan the QR code on another phone or scanning a written QR code. But this method can make it difficult to monitor who gets access to the QR code. Luckily, Google is working on a solution that allows you to share the produced QR code more easily.
A new commit by Google engineer Abel Tesfaye submitted to AOSP. It seeks to tweak the “Share Wi-Fi” page to incorporate a sharing button nearby. The default sharing component, which is Google’s Nearby Share on all certified Android devices, is launched when tapped. This way, the user can easily share the QR code with any nearby peer.
Ease of sharing with Nearby Share
Since Nearby Share works remotely, it needs no physical interaction or codes to be checked. This means that you can share your WiFi password from across the room. Also, it requires permissions from both the sender and the receiver to share some files. So it can be presumed that the same would be true for sharing WiFi credentials. But this commit has not yet been merged in Android 12. And it is still unclear whether this function appears in the upcoming Android OS.
There’s probably still time for a feature like this to find its way to the next version of Android, but fresh feature additions are closing the window. The first Android 12 Developer Preview is expected to possibly go live sometime next month. However, a merger now could mean that we may not see this feature until a second or third developer preview, if at all.
