How to Allow or Disallow Wi-Fi in Windows 11

This post describes steps you can take to completely disable or enable Wi-Fi connection in Windows 11.

By default, your Windows device with Wi-Fi adapters will allow for users to enable or disable the ability to connect to a Wi-Fi network. No special actions needed.

Administrators can also limit the ability of users turning on or off Wi-Fi connections using the registry editor in Windows. These settings in Windows registry will allow or disallow WiFi connection.

The most restricted value is 0.

The following list shows the supported values:

  • 0 – WiFi connection is not allowed.
  • 1 (default) – WiFi connection is allowed.

Below are steps that show you how to restrict the ability for users to turn on or off Wi-Fi adapter to connect to a Wi-Fi network in Windows 11.

How to restrict users turning on or off WiFi in Windows 11

As mentioned above, administrators can restrict users from turning on or off Wi-Fi in Windows 11.

When WiFi is restricted, users will not be able to turn on or off a Wi-Fi adapter to connect to a network.

Below is how to do that.

Open Windows registry editor by clicking on the Start Menu and searching for Registry Editor as highlighted below.

Under Best match, select Registry Editor app to launch Windows Registry Editor.

In the left pane of Registry Editor, expand the tree: 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\default\Wifi\AllowWiFi

You may be able to copy and paste the line above in the navigation box in Windows Registry Editor.

In the AllowWiFi config page on the right-hand side, look for the REG_DWORD name value.

Right click value and select Modify or simply double click to open.

On the pop-up window, use the value below to allow or disallow WiFi connection.

Most restricted value is 0.

The following list shows the supported values:

  • 0 – WiFi connection is not allowed.
  • 1 (default) – WiFi connection is allowed.

Select OK when done.

Close Windows Registry Editor.

That should do it! With a value data 0, users will lose the ability to turn on or off Wi-Fi feature in Windows 11.

Conclusion

This post showed you how to configure Windows to restrict the ability for users to turn on or off Wi-Fi in Windows 11.

If you find any error above or have something to share, please use the comment form below.