---
title: "Life hack: how to share your Wi-Fi with guests easily"
author: "Stan Voo"
url: https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/how-to-share-your-wi-fi-with-guests
published: 2011-11-15
summary: "Stop dictating your Wi-Fi password letter by letter. A QR code by the door lets guests with a smartphone connect in seconds."
---

# Life hack: how to share your Wi-Fi with guests easily

These days lots of people have Wi-Fi routers at home, let alone at the office, to connect all sorts of wireless gadgets or the more familiar laptops. I assume many of them sometimes invite someone over for a cup of tea (it happens).

So when friends come over, **be tech-hospitable**: share your Wi-Fi. Let them casually [tweet](https://web.archive.org/web/20120208224930/http://stasparshin.com/category/tegi/tvitter "My notes on Twitter") something, like "having tea at Vasya's, his place is cool and he even has Wi-Fi" :)

There's a way to **stop hunting for wherever you wrote down your wireless password every time, and then spelling it out letter by letter.** "S as in dollar": you know what I mean.

A [two-dimensional barcode, or QR code](https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/how-to-use-qr-codes-and-track-them), will help you with this.

1. Open a [QR code generator](http://www.qr-code.com.ua/).
2. In the "Content" field, choose "Wi-Fi network".
3. In the SSID field, enter the name of your network. For TP-Link routers, for example, it usually looks like "TP-LINK\_SOME\_LETTERS" (unless it was renamed during setup).
4. Enter the password.
5. Choose the network type. If you don't know it, ask whoever set the network up :)
6. Create a QR code for your network with the "Generate" button.
7. Save the resulting barcode as an image.

Voilà! Now you have a shortcut for connecting to your home or office Wi-Fi. **Print it out and hang it by the door.** To connect, your tech-savvy guests just have to scan the code.

UPD. A question came up right away: "What if the guests come with a laptop?" You can scan the code with a laptop too, if it has a camera. But it's very unlikely to have scanning software installed. So the life hack only works if guests come with a smartphone or another gadget with a camera.

UPD2: Decoding the code doesn't need an internet connection. Only a recognition app installed in advance.

P.S. I was sadly surprised when Vladislav Flaks, if I'm not mistaken, said at the [OWOX conference](http://conf.owox.ua/): "At first we thought of using QR codes for registration..." (perhaps hinting at this summer's [8p.ua](http://8p.ua/), where [Netpeak](http://netpeak.ua/) pulled that trick) "...but we asked around who uses them and **realized QR is still too uncommon a thing**".