Disable Your iPhone’s Wi-Fi
Your iPhone is designed to prioritize a Wi-Fi connection over cellular. This way, you don’t have to turn off your cellular data once you’re home, and you won’t have to worry about burning through your data plan by accident.
With that said, if your iPhone is picking up a Wi-Fi signal that’s faint enough to connect to your iPhone but not strong enough to actually connect you to the internet, you won’t be able to use Wi-Fi or cellular data.
This will usually be apparent by the presence of a weak Wi-Fi indicator instead of the usual 5G or LTE symbols in your status bar. To fix this issue, you can quickly disconnect your iPhone’s Wi-Fi in the Control Center.
To access Control Center, swipe down from the top-right corner if your iPhone has Face ID, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen if you’re using an iPhone SE or an older model with a Home Button on the front. You’ll see the Wi-Fi icon in the top-left panel.
Tap on it to disconnect from any nearby Wi-Fi networks and temporarily avoid joining new ones. This is the recommended option, as you won’t have to worry about forgetting to turn it back on later; it automatically resets the next day at 5 a.m. or when you move to a new location or restart your iPhone.
If you prefer, you can also disable Wi-Fi entirely by opening the Settings app, selecting Wi-Fi, and toggling it off from there. This will disable all Wi-Fi features, including things like AirDrop, until you manually turn it back on.