Wi-Fi felt slow on my phone until I found this hidden developer option

You know that moment when your phone shows full Wi-Fi bars, yet videos keep buffering, pages stall halfway, and downloads move like they’re wading through syrup? You start side-eyeing your ISP, rebooting the router, maybe even blaming the universe. However, the real troublemaker might be much closer to home — hiding in your phone’s settings.

Android has always had a feature called Wi-Fi Scan Throttling. It’s meant to be helpful, but in practice, it often behaves like an invisible brake on your connection, shaving off responsiveness when you least expect it. The good news is it’s not untouchable. If you know where to dig, you can switch it off and boost your Wi-Fi speed.

Why Android throttles your Wi-Fi

The road to buffering hell is paved with battery-saving intentions

To understand why your phone feels slow, you first have to understand the inherent tension between performance and longevity. Our smartphones these days are engaged in a constant, high-stakes balancing act. On one hand, you expect instantaneous connectivity without worrying about why Wi-Fi on your phone is slow. On the other hand, there’s a small lithium-ion battery that’s supposed to last through a full, chaotic day. To achieve the latter, Google baked a bunch of fine-grained power controls into Android. One of them is Wi-Fi Scan Throttling.

By default, your phone is relentlessly curious. It is always sniffing for nearby Wi-Fi networks, not just to connect, but also to help triangulate your location. This background probing, known as Wi-Fi scanning, burns through power. Left unchecked, even a single app could chew through your battery just by hunting for networks all day. So Android steps in and puts a leash on it. With Wi-Fi scan throttling enabled, background apps are allowed to scan only a limited number of times within a set window, and even apps you are actively using do not have free rein to refresh network data whenever they want.

This sounds reasonable, but in practice, it can be maddening. When your phone slows down, how often it scans its surroundings also slows how quickly it reacts. If you walk around your house on a mesh Wi-Fi system, your phone needs those scans to decide when to jump from a weak living room node to a stronger bedroom one. With throttling on, that decision gets delayed. You hang onto a fading signal longer than you should, packets start dropping, and everything feels oddly sticky.

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The same thing happens with apps that lean on Wi-Fi for location awareness. Navigation, fitness, or location-based apps can appear jittery or imprecise because the system is rationing how often their data gets refreshed. The slowdown you notice is rarely due to a lack of raw bandwidth; rather, it is latency introduced by an operating system prioritizing battery life over network responsiveness.

How to disable Wi-Fi throttling in Developer Options

Unshackling your connection

If you are willing to sacrifice a modicum of battery life for a more responsive connection, you can override this behavior. However, you will not find the switch in your standard Settings menu. It is sequestered inside “Developer Options,” a deliberately hidden menu meant for testing and diagnostics rather than everyday use. Getting there requires a small, almost ceremonial sequence.

Start by opening the main Settings app, then scroll to About Phone. Depending on your specific manufacturer’s UI — be it Samsung’s One UI, Google’s Pixel Launcher, or OnePlus’s OxygenOS — you may need to navigate slightly differently, but you are looking for an entry labeled Software information. Once you locate it, click it, then tap the Build Number entry seven times in quick succession. As you do, Android displays a tongue-in-cheek countdown warning you that you’re edging closer to “developer” status. After the final tap, you’ll be prompted to enter your device PIN. Once confirmed, a brief notification appears, signaling that Developer Options are now unlocked and ready to explore.

Head back to the main Settings screen, and you will spot a new option called Developer Options at the bottom, or inside System or Additional Settings, depending on your phone. Open it, scroll down to the Networking section, and keep going. Buried among a parade of cryptic toggles is one labeled “Wi-Fi scan throttling.” It is usually turned on by default. Flip the switch off, and you remove Android’s built-in governor on how often apps are allowed to scan for nearby networks.

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The effect is immediate. Your phone can now refresh its view of the wireless environment as often as needed. In practice, this means faster handoffs between mesh nodes, stronger connections as you move around your home, and location-based apps that snap into place instead of lagging behind. That persistent feeling of the internet dragging its feet should fade away.

The shackles are off; enjoy the sweet taste of unbridled connectivity

Monitor your usage for a few days; if the battery drain feels negligible compared to the performance gain, you have successfully optimized your device. If the drain is too severe, you can always return to this menu and re-enable the throttle. You should also adopt habits to help your phone’s battery last longer.