Prevent nearby Wi-Fi networks from appearing on your computer
All Wi-Fi networks near your computer or laptop appear as soon as you click on the Wi-Fi icon in the taskbar, but you may want to hide some of these networks for various reasons – perhaps because your neighbor is using an inappropriate network name, or this nearby network is not password protected and devoid of parental controls, giving young children the opportunity to access inappropriate content.
You may also want to block all nearby Wi-Fi networks from appearing and allow only your own network to appear. This is useful if you don't want a family member who uses your computer to connect to another Wi-Fi network.
Whatever your reason, there is a trick in Windows that allows you to hide nearby Wi-Fi networks from appearing in the Wi-Fi list on the taskbar. You don’t even need to use external programs, we rely on programming commands only. So let’s start reviewing the steps directly in the following lines.
You can hide or prevent nearby Wi-Fi networks from appearing on your Windows computer by using the “ netsh ” commands. But first of all, you will need to run the command prompt as an administrator to execute these commands.
To do this, open the Start menu, search for Command Prompt, right-click on the CMD shortcut, select “Run as administrator” from the menu, then press Yes to open the Command Prompt window with administrative privileges. Now follow the following commands depending on how you want to hide Wi-Fi networks.
Method 1: Prevent specific Wi-Fi networks from appearing
After running the command prompt, you can hide individual Wi-Fi networks by adding them to the blacklist, as a result of which they will not appear in the list of available Wi-Fi networks nearby and you will not be able to connect to them on your computer. All you have to do is enter the following command:
netsh wlan add filter permission=block ssid="WIFI NAME" networktype=infrastructure
But before hitting Enter on your keyboard to execute the command, replace “ WIFI NAME ” with the name of the wireless network (SSID) you want to hide that appears in the standard Wi-Fi pop-up menu on the taskbar.
After executing the command you will get the message " The filter is added on the system successfully " and the network will completely disappear from the list and there is no longer a way to connect to it through this computer.
Of course, you can repeat this process to add more networks to your Wi-Fi blacklist. But keep in mind that the filtering here is based on the network name. So, if your neighbor changes the name of his Wi-Fi network again, you will see the new name appear in the Wi-Fi menu on the taskbar as it was. To undo this change and remove a network from the blacklist, run the following command and replace “WIFI NAME” with the name of the Wi-Fi network:
netsh wlan delete filter permission=block ssid="WIFI NAME" networktype=infrastructure
Method 2: Allow specific Wi-Fi networks to appear
Instead of hiding Wi-Fi networks individually, you can whitelist one or more Wi-Fi networks, and then block all others.
This ensures that the device can only connect to networks that you approve. But of course, this is inconvenient if you're using a laptop - if you only list your home network and take the device somewhere else, you won't even be able to see any other Wi-Fi hotspots without undoing this setting.
netsh wlan add filter permission=allow ssid="WIFI NAME" networktype=infrastructure
To whitelist a Wi-Fi network, run the attached command, replacing " WIFI NAME " with the name (SSID) of your wireless network. Repeat this process to add more networks to your Wi-Fi whitelist, if necessary.
Once you have set a list of your whitelisted networks, run the following command to block all Wi-Fi networks that you have not added to the list:
netsh wlan add filter permission=denyall networktype=infrastructure
When the message The filter is added on the system successfully appears, the commands have been executed successfully. You can now click on the mini Wi-Fi icon on the taskbar next to the clock and you will only find the networks you have selected in the list.
To undo this setting, run the following command. Your computer will be able to see and connect to all wireless networks that are not on the block list normally:
netsh wlan delete filter permission=denyall networktype=infrastructure
You can also optionally remove allowed Wi-Fi network rules. Just run the following command, replacing " WIFI NAME " with the name of your Wi-Fi network.
netsh wlan delete filter permission=allow ssid="WIFI NAME" networktype=infrastructure
Note that the following command will also allow you to view the currently active filters on your Wi-Fi network. If you have added networks to the blacklist or whitelist, you will be able to see them in the list that will appear after executing the command through the command prompt:
netsh wlan show filters
You can use the above commands to delete any filters that appear in the list generated by the above command. Simply use the same command you used to create the filter and then replace Add with Delete to delete the filter.