The experience of connecting to public Wi-Fi networks can often be an annoying process. Especially when accessing the internet in places such as cafes, airports and hotels, the pages we encounter require us to enter information such as username and password repeatedly. Google plans to solve this problem with the new Android update.

Android will now show this screen on Wi-Fi connection

Google is taking an important step to simplify the experience of Android users connecting to Wi-Fi networks. Accordingly, ‘Captive Portal’ pages encountered when connecting to public Wi-Fi networks will be opened through the more advanced Android Custom Tabs instead of the standard Android WebView.

For those who do not know, Captive Portal is the web pages of many public Wi-Fi networks that require users to log in before allowing devices to access the internet. In the current system, these pages are opened through the limited-featured Android System WebView, which requires users to manually enter their login credentials and personal data each time.

With the new update, the Captive Portal page will be opened via Android Custom Tabs. This will give users access to their autofill data, saved passwords and other personal information. This will make the process of connecting to public Wi-Fi networks much faster.

Packages added to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) with the tag ‘captive_portal_cct’ will bring Custom Tabs support to the Captive Portal Login app. With this feature, users will be able to enter their login information faster and connect to the network more quickly.

Of course, this change does not provide significant improvements in terms of security. So let us remind you that malicious Wi-Fi access point attacks may continue and you should be careful when connecting to public networks.