How to Hide WiFi Network in Windows 10 & 11

You can hide any WiFi network you don’t like to connect to or see in the network flyout menu. Here’s how you can do it in Windows 10 & 11.

WiFi is pretty common these days. No matter where you are, there are a ton of WiFi networks overlapping each other. As such, Windows lists all the WiFi networks it can detect in the network flyout menu. You can open the network flyout menu by clicking the Network icon on the taskbar. For the most part, this is a good thing because it makes it easy to connect to the network you want.

However, from time to time, there might be WiFi networks that you want to avoid at all costs because they are not so secure or using offensive names (SSIDs). In those cases, you can hide the WiFi network in Windows from ever being visible in the network menu.

This article shows you how to hide a WiFi network in Windows 10 and 11. The steps below work independently of router manufacturers like Tenda, TP-link, Dlink, Netgear, etc.

Table of contents:

• Find the WiFi SSID (network name)
• How to hide WiFi network in Windows
• How to unhide WiFi network in Windows
• How to see blocked and allowed WiFi networks

The steps below work the same in Windows 10 and 11.

Find the WiFi SSID (network name)

To hide the WiFi network, you need to know its SSID name. In simple terms, SSID is a fancy word for the WiFi network name.

To find the WiFi SSID name, click on the network icon in the taskbar, and you should see all the available WiFi networks with their names. Note down the SSID of the WiFi network you want to hide.

How to hide WiFi network in Windows

Here is how we can use the WiFi SSID to hide the WiFi network in Windows.

1. Open the Start menu.
2. Search for “Command Prompt.”
3. Right-click on Command Prompt
4. Choose the “Run as administrator” option.
5. Run the below command while replacing “WIFI_NAME” with the SSID you got earlier.
   netsh wlan add filter permission=block ssid="WIFI_NAME" networktype=infrastructure
6. With that, the WiFi network is hidden.

Steps with more details:

First thing, launch the Start menu, search for “Command Prompt,” right-click on the result and choose the “Run as administrator” option. This action opens Command Prompt with admin rights.

Windows 11 users can open Terminal as admin and then the Command Prompt tab in it.

After opening the Command Prompt window, execute the below command while replacing “WIFI_NAME” with the SSID you got from the network flyout menu.

netsh wlan add filter permission=block ssid="WIFI_NAME" networktype=infrastructure

As soon as you execute the command, Windows will hide the network. You will see the “The filter is added on the system successfully” message.

From now on, you will not see the target WiFi network in the network flyout menu.

Unhide WiFi network in Windows 10

If you wish to unhide the previously hidden WiFi network, run the below command while replacing the “WIFI_NAME” with the blocked WiFi SSID.

If you look closely, the command is similar to the above command with a slight change. That is, the “add” parameter is replaced with “delete.”

netsh wlan delete filter permission=block ssid="WIFI_NAME" networktype=infrastructure

Once you unhide the WiFi network, the Command Prompt will show the “The filter is added on the system successfully” message.

How to see blocked and allowed WiFi networks

If you don’t remember the hidden WiFi SSID name, you can get it from Windows. For example, if you blocked the WiFi network long ago, you might not remember the name. For those kinds of situations, Windows has a pretty neat command.

Execute the below command in the Command Prompt window, and it will show all the WiFi networks you’ve explicitly blocked or allowed.

netsh wlan show filters

I cleared the block list earlier, so there are no entries under the block list. But if you’ve hidden the WiFi network earlier, you will see that WiFi name under the block list.

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That is all. It is that simple to hide a WiFi network in Windows 10 and 11.

I hope this simple and easy Windows how-to guide helped you.

If you are stuck or need help, send an email, and I will try to help as much as possible.

If you like this article, check out how to disconnect WiFi after connecting to Ethernet.