How iOS 9’s Wi-Fi Assist Actually Works

In iOS 9, Apple introduced a new feature called WiFi Assist. Now, if you’re curious as to why that was happening, Apple’s released a support doc describing exactly how the feature works.

Wi-Fi Assist helps your phone use the best connection possible.

Apple does acknowledge that using Wi-Fi Assist could cause your phone to use more data than it normally does when you have a poor Wi-Fi connection, but that amount should only be a “small percentage higher”.

In the U.S., the most popular iOS app categories measured by time spent using them are social networking, photo & video, utilities and games, with music rounding out the top 5 on the iPhone while travel makes the #5 slot on the iPad. This means the feature won’t kick your phone over to cellular service for tasks that are particularly data intensive, such as streaming songs or Netflix or downloading big attachments from email apps.

Whatever you do, never ever start updating applications after Wi-Fi Assist switches you to cellular data even if the App Store keeps winking at you from the dock saying that you have apps waiting to be updated.

With just a few simple steps, universal app campaigns lets you easily set up ad campaigns from within the Google Play Developer Console and promote your app across Google Play, Google Search, YouTube and the Google Display Network. They also point out that WiFi Assist will not activate if you are data roaming, so bill shock should not be an issue for you. Either way, you can turn it off if you want to under Settings Cellular.