Asking for your Wi-Fi password always seems a little strange, but Google is working on ways to make the process easier. Android 10 allowed users to share network details via QR codes, and now it looks like Nearby Share could simplify things even further in an upcoming version of Android – possibly until the release of Android 12 this year.
According to a new pledge sent to the Android Open Source Project by Google engineer Abel Tesfaye, the current Wi-Fi sharing page may add a new button in the future that will allow users to exchange Wi-Fi credentials through Nearby Share Google’s Airdrop feature similar to the one introduced last year in beta.
The current Wi-Fi page on Android 10+ allows you to share details via QR code.
While this method of exchanging Wi-Fi login details still requires guests to be in the vicinity of their hosts, it eliminates the need to pull a physical QR code and do the weird dance of trying to get one device to capture the other device screen correctly. Small improvements in quality of life like this are welcome and help to make an operating system look refined and carefully considered.
This commit has not yet been merged, so there is no way to tell exactly when the feature might appear in an Android version. The first preview of Android 12 for developers is fast approaching, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see this Wi-Fi sharing update reach its final public release later this year. We know that Nearby Share can be used to share apps soon, so why not use Wi-Fi?
