Connect to the Internet

Quick reference

• 00:04 These days, none of us can live without a connection to the Internet, and so
• 00:09 knowing how to connect Windows 11 to your Wi-Fi network is so important.
• 00:14 And the good news is, is that once you've set up your connection,
• 00:17 you don't have to do it each time you log into your PC.
• 00:20 Because Windows 11 will remember the last connection you used and
• 00:23 automatically connect to the network whenever you boot your PC up.
• 00:27 And what you'll notice is that when you first install Windows 11,
• 00:31 part of the setup process is to select your Wi-Fi network.
• 00:35 So that might be your home network if you work from home, or
• 00:38 it might be the network that you connect to in your office.
• 00:41 So you're probably going to do this during the install process.
• 00:44 So you're not going to really have to do it at any other time.
• 00:48 However, if you move to a different location, so
• 00:51 maybe you're working in a different office for the day, or maybe you even move house,
• 00:55 like I did recently, I had to reset up my new connection.
• 00:59 So it's always useful to know where you need to go in order to set this up.
• 01:03 So let's take a look at it.
• 01:05 Now, the first thing to be aware of is in the bottom right-hand corner,
• 01:08 you're going to see if you're connected to your local Wi-Fi network.
• 01:11 Now, I'm going to talk mostly about Wi-Fi in this lesson, because I think
• 01:15 it's the way that 99.9% of people choose to connect to the Internet these days.
• 01:20 However, there are some people who may be still using Ethernet cable.
• 01:24 The process is pretty much the same.
• 01:25 You just need to make sure that you physically connect your device to your
• 01:29 router.
• 01:30 Now, in the bottom right-hand corner, you can see here,
• 01:33 it's showing me my network connection, which I'm going to blur out, just in case.
• 01:37 But I can see that I'm connected because I have full bars, so
• 01:41 I know that my signal is strong.
• 01:43 And I can tell you, it should be for the amount that I'm paying for it.
• 01:46 But enough about my problems, let's click to open the Quick Settings panel.
• 01:51 This is the easiest place to come to in order to turn your Wi-Fi off and on.
• 01:56 As we've seen, we have a toggle just here.
• 01:58 So if I click on this icon, it's going to disconnect me from my Wi-Fi network.
• 02:03 So currently, I have no access to the Internet.
• 02:05 Notice the icon has now changed in that bottom corner as well,
• 02:10 because I'm no longer connected.
• 02:12 So what can I do if I want to reconnect up to my home network, or
• 02:17 maybe I want to add in another Internet connection?
• 02:21 Well, if we click the arrow just here,
• 02:23 you can see it's telling me that my Wi-Fi is off.
• 02:26 It says, turn on Wi-Fi to connect to an available Wi-Fi network.
• 02:30 Now because I use this connection all the time, as soon as I turn my Wi-Fi back on,
• 02:35 it's going to find my network.
• 02:37 And you can see that it's just automatically connected.
• 02:40 So you'll find that if you have used the connection previously,
• 02:44 the process of reconnecting is going to be pretty much automatic.
• 02:47 And you can see the connection's been restored by the icon in the taskbar.
• 02:51 Now, in general, what happens here is that when you turn your Wi-Fi on,
• 02:55 Windows 11 is going to look for any available Wi-Fi networks.
• 02:59 So if you're in a new location, you should find that the Wi-Fi network for
• 03:03 the building is going to pop-up in here.
• 03:05 And hopefully whoever is responsible for the Internet has given it a fairly
• 03:09 meaningful name, so it's going to be pretty easy for you to find.
• 03:13 If you think about if you take your laptop to a hotel for the evening,
• 03:17 as soon as you turn on Wi-Fi, you can normally see Hilton free Wi-Fi, or
• 03:22 Premier Inn Wi-Fi, something like that.
• 03:25 So it's fairly obvious which one you need to connect to.
• 03:28 Now, it's a bit hard for me to demonstrate,
• 03:30 because mine's automatically connected.
• 03:31 But all you would do is you would find the one you want to connect to in the list,
• 03:35 click on it, and then you're going to have a Connect button just here.
• 03:39 Mine says Disconnect, obviously, because I'm already connected.
• 03:42 But if I wasn't, I could choose Connect, and
• 03:45 it's then going to run through the connection process.
• 03:48 Something you might also find is once you are connected to the Wi-Fi, and
• 03:53 let's use the example of hotel Wi-Fi, it will say Connected in here.
• 03:57 And then when you open up an Internet browser,
• 03:59 it's not going to take you to the Internet straightaway.
• 04:02 It might ask you to enter in something like your room number, or
• 04:06 maybe your email address.
• 04:08 Now you don't generally tend to find that on office Wi-Fi networks or home Wi-Fi
• 04:13 networks, but it happens frequently when you're trying to connect to hotel Wi-Fi.
• 04:18 So just be aware of that additional step.
• 04:21 Now, another thing that we have in Quick Settings,
• 04:24 which is kind of related to Wi-Fi as well, is Airplane mode.
• 04:27 Now, I actually removed that from my Quick Settings.
• 04:29 So let's edit the Quick Settings panel.
• 04:31 Let's click on Add, and we're going to say Flight mode.
• 04:35 Let's click on Done.
• 04:36 So I can toggle Flight mode off and on using this button.
• 04:40 And what this button allows us to do is toggle off or on all Wi-Fi connections,
• 04:45 including Bluetooth.
• 04:46 And you'll often see this used on, as you might expect, airplanes.
• 04:51 A lot of the time,
• 04:52 if the airplane that you're on has a Wi-Fi network that you can connect to, and
• 04:57 many do these days, you need to put your phone or your device into Flight mode.
• 05:02 Which will allow you to connect to the airplane Wi-Fi network,
• 05:07 but all other connectivity is disabled.
• 05:10 The final thing we're going to take a look at here is we're going to jump across into
• 05:15 Settings, because I just want to show you where you have your additional network and
• 05:19 Wi-Fi options.
• 05:20 So as you might expect, you're going to find these under Network & Internet.
• 05:24 This is where we can see our Wi-Fi networks at the top.
• 05:28 We can also helpfully see our data usage up here as well.
• 05:31 You can see I've got Wi-Fi turned on.
• 05:33 And if I click on this, I can take a look at the properties for my connection.
• 05:37 I can show any available networks in the area.
• 05:40 Again, I only have one.
• 05:43 And I can also do things like manage my known networks.
• 05:46 So in here, this is where you're going to get a list of all networks that you've
• 05:51 connected to recently.
• 05:52 So I can see my current home network at the top, but
• 05:55 I can also see the two networks I used to use in the last apartment that I lived in.
• 06:00 So Windows 11 remembers older networks.
• 06:05 So if I was to go back to my old apartment,
• 06:07 as soon as I walked in the door, it's going to connect to the Wi-Fi,
• 06:12 because these are still listed in my known networks.
• 06:15 Notice we have a Forget button over here, so
• 06:18 we can manage those if we want to remove them.
• 06:20 Just be aware of all of those different ways you can connect to the network, and
• 06:25 where you come to manage your settings.

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