[Android] Automatically turn off your WiFi after a certain period of time with Auto WiFi Off

One of the best ways to save your data, especially when you have a limited plan is to connect to a local Wi-Fi network. It actually helps you save battery in a lot of instances too, because 4G (and sometimes even 3G) just tends to tax a battery when it comes to juice. One of the worst things about using a Wi-Fi network is that the function stays active even if you are disconnected. This can actually drain the battery significantly, because the device ends up constantly searching for an active Wi-Fi network nearby. Wouldn’t it be great if your Wi-Fi functionality was disabled or turned off automatically once you were no longer connected to a network? Auto WiFi Off does exactly that as the name implies.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Auto WiFi Off is a free application for Android that turns off the Wi-Fi connectivity automatically when not in use, to prevent unnecessary battery drain.

Pros

Very simple interface and easy to use
Not much to the application itself:
- Enable or disable WiFi
- Show notifications for when WiFi is disabled
- Designate the timeout period, which determines how long after WiFi connection has ceased that the app will turn off the adapter
Needless to say, it works very well despite the shortcomings

Cons

Not a very attractive interface, doesn’t even use Holo but instead uses an iOS style window… on Android
Includes Airpush ads
- Advertisement pop-ups and app install requests galore!
- ‘Get more Apps’ button at the bottom of the main menu

Discussion

Auto WiFi off is an extremely simple application that’s meant to do one thing, turn off your Wi-Fi connectivity once you are no longer connected to a network. My main worry was what if you’re accidentally disconnected from a network? Would the application still turn off your Wi-Fi connectivity? That could get annoying real fast, especially if you’re in an area where there’s a very weak Wi-Fi signal. This is remedied easily, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

One of the worst things about the app is that it uses Airpush which is basically a mobile advertising platform. When you first start up Auto WiFi off it will ask you to accept or decline a EULA in regards to Airpush, and then it will also ask you if you want to install some third party software. Even when I tapped decline, the app still tried to install shortcuts to my home-screen which was full, luckily. It’s not a huge issue, but I would keep this information in mind if you decide to try the app out.

The next thing I will mention is that while the UI is clean and easy to navigate, I personally don’t like the theme. It looks very much like the vanilla iPhone skin with the light blue bar at the top and the faint greys spaced throughout the window. I much prefer the Holo UI, but you get the point.

There are only a couple functions related to disabling the Wi-Fi connectivity, which are as follows:

Enable Auto Wi-Fi Off
Show notification when the Wi-Fi is turned off
Set a timeout for the Wi-Fi disable feature (how much time after Wi-Fi is disconnected)

It goes without saying, you have to enable the application through the main window by tapping the first button at the top of the window. After doing so, you’ll want to set the timeout value for when the application will turn off the Wi-Fi. This is basically a grace period before the connectivity is disabled completely, but this is also how you set the app to not disable connectivity all the time in areas with spotty wireless signal. The available increments range from one minute all the way up to sixty minutes. By default, the setting is already on five minutes

For reference, Auto Wi-Fi Off uses about 40MB of RAM while running which is not light at all.

Conclusion and download link

Auto WiFi Off is definitely a useful application, but the Airpush integration pretty much kills all usefulness. If you can look past the Airpush integration then you will find Auto WiFi Off worthy. However, Airpush is so annoying, most people will want to pull their hair out. So, as it stands, I would stay away from the app. A pity, too — it is a useful app.