Google is trying out a small but mighty change to Android’s multi-user system with the ability to choose which users are allowed to use a saved Wi‑Fi network. The feature, now appearing in early Canary builds, is designed to work around a long-standing problem with shared phones and tablets — when you entered Wi‑Fi credentials they became device-wide and there was no way to manage them individually.
What The New Wi‑Fi Sharing Toggles Actually Do
During network setup, Android now makes two options available under Advanced settings: Share Network and Allow Users To Edit Network. When Share Network is turned on, all of the other profiles on the device can connect to that same network without entering the password again. Turn it off and each user profile has to authenticate separately. The Edit toggle controls if other users can edit that network’s settings.
Both of these options are available in initial connection (through Quick Settings) and afterward (from Settings > Network & Internet > Internet, on the network details page).
Shared networks are denoted by a multi-user icon for easy recognition. Unshared saved networks have a share icon that takes you to the Wi‑Fi sharing sheet, while other networks still use the same old lock/globe icons if secured.
What we have for now is that, in initial testing, the Share Network switch does what it says on the tin — with access by additional profiles denied until they’ve entered any necessary passwords. The Edit permission is looking half-baked in some builds, where secondary profiles may see a permission warning when attempting to open network details. That implies the UI is more caught up than the policy plumbing underneath, which in pre-release Android features is usually true.
Why this change matters for families and IT teams
On Android, multi-user mode is best for tablets in family rooms or shared by multiple members of a classroom or workplace. Previously, once your device was connected to a home, work or personal hotspot, every other profile would inherit those credentials. That was handy, but it carried risk: parents might not like a child’s profile thrown onto a work network, and IT doesn’t often want guest or kiosk users silently acquiring corporate SSIDs.
Granular controls are also in line with the principle of least privilege. Android Enterprise deployments, governed by management tools from the likes of Google, Microsoft and VMware, typically segregate work and personal data through profiles, though Wi‑Fi access had historically been a sledgehammer on co-used devices. Disabling sharing for sensitive SSIDs lowers the chances of inadvertently exposing credentials and prevents movement laterally between user contexts if a profile is breached.
The change will also be useful in high-traffic areas such as retail, healthcare and hospitality where tablets are shared. A nurse’s profile can continue access to the secure clinical network while a temporary contractor profile has only guest SSID. That’s the sort of small policy enforcement that can head off an amazing number of help-desk tickets.
How It Fits Into Android’s Multi-User Design
Android has supported multiple users on tablets since Jelly Bean, but lest you think that means the same holds true for phones, be forewarned: it doesn’t.
Lollipop ushered in support for multiple user accounts, and subsequent to that release were two small updates we received over the air only a few days apart. In the background, Wi‑Fi configurations have lived on the device itself, meaning when we found efficiencies like roaming and captive portal handling that could be used between networks, credentials also now spanned them. This new toggle brings in something we have wanted for a long time; it adds another policy layer per profile without crippling the usability of networks that are to be shared when that still makes sense.
It even disentangles a pair of concepts that are frequently confused with one another: cross-profile sharing on one device vs. cloud backup and restore for Wi‑Fi credentials associated with a Google account. The latter is not what this feature targets. Your account-level sync behavior is not changing here; this is about who on the same hardware gets easy access to an SSID.
Rollout timing and availability for Android Wi‑Fi controls
The toggles have shown up in the Android Wi‑Fi stack in the latest Canary builds, suggesting they might be poised to hit more widespread testing. Though schedules can change, features that arrive in the Canary edition quickly make their way to public betas. The change is expected to appear in an Android beta release soon, then come to stable if related feedback is positive.
For users, there’s no systemwide feature to enable — the controls appear contextually as you connect to or administer a network. For admins, wait for management APIs to come so enterprise mobility tools can configure default behaviors per profile and even prevent edits on fully managed devices.
What to watch next as Android tests network features
With the Wi‑Fi sharing controls, Google also appears to be working on enabling a dual-band hotspot mode for simultaneous 2.4GHz and 6GHz hotspot broadcasting.
That would enable newer devices on those bands to get faster backhaul while still remaining compatible with legacy clients — which is handy for mixed fleets and the like. Wi‑Fi 6 and 6E adoption is rapidly growing, so intelligent band selection is more important than ever.
Thanks in part to Android’s dominance of more than half a billion phones worldwide, according to StatCounter, even the most modest networking changes may reach hundreds of millions of users. Letting Wi‑Fi settings be shared on a per-network basis might seem like some niche checkbox-on-a-settings-screen feature, but as real-world usability goes, it’s the type of granular control that can make shared Android devices safer, easier to use and manage.
