How to Change Your Router’s Wi-Fi Channel
You probably wouldn’t want to go through the trouble of jailbreaking just for this, so use one of the other tools here instead. These tools moved to Cydia after Apple booted them from the official App Store.
#HOW TO CHECK WIFI CHANNEL FREQUENCY INSTALL#
If you jailbreak, you can install an app like WiFi Explorer or WiFiFoFum from Cydia to get this functionality on your iPhone or iPad. Apple restricts apps from accessing this Wi-Fi data directly from the hardware, so you can’t get an app like Android’s Wifi Analyzer on Apple’s App Store. This isn’t possible on iPhones and iPads. RELATED: Jailbreaking Explained: What You Need to Know About Jailbreaking iPhones and iPads Enable and use the “Wi-Fi Scanner” feature inside the app. Update: We’ve been informed you can do this with Apple’s own AirPort Utility application. The app will actually tell you which Wi-Fi channels are better for your Wi-Fi network, so you can go straight to your router’s web interface and choose the ideal one. The app will display a list of Wi-Fi channels and a star rating - the one with the most stars in the best. Tap the View menu and select Channel rating. You’ll see an overview of the wireless networks in your area and which channels they’re using. Just install the free app from Google Play and launch it. If you want to search for Wi-Fi channels on your phone instead of your PC, the easiest-to-use application we’ve found is Wifi Analyzer on Android. RELATED: How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference In the screenshot below, channel 1 looks the least congested. Read the output of the command to see which channels are the most congested and make your decision. Open a Terminal and run the following command: The command here is installed by default on Ubuntu and other popular Linux distributions, so it’s the fastest method. Instead, you might as well just use the terminal. You could use a graphical app like Wifi Radar for this on Linux, but you’d have to install it first. The “Best 2.4 GHz Channels” and “Best 5 GHz” Channels” fields will recommend the ideal Wi-Fi channels you should be using on your router. Select the Wi-Fi Scan tab and click Scan Now. Instead, click the Window menu and select Utilities. To access it, hold the Option key and click the Wi-Fi icon on the menu bar at the top of your screen. Here, we can see that channel 6 looks a bit cluttered - we might want to switch to channel 1 instead.īelieve it or not, macOS actually has this feature integrated. Launch the tool, locate the Channel header, and click it to sort by Wi-Fi channel. We liked NIrSoft’s WifiInfoView instead - its simple interface does the job and it doesn’t need any installation. Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector is very powerful, but it’s a bit overkill for this.