How Do I Temporarily Disable My Home Wi-Fi?

Pausing Wi-Fi is best done through the router’s web interface or with the app provided by your router manufacturer. Pausing is more appropriate than shutting off the whole router, but that is an option if your router doesn’t support Wi-Fi pausing. The specific steps necessary to freeze Wi-Fi is different between router brands and models:

Google Wifi

Use the Google Home app to pause Wi-Fi on a Google Wifi network.

Linksys

Wi-Fi can be stopped temporarily on devices managed by the Linksys app, or you can log in through the router’s IP address. Wi-Fi pausing is available through the Parental Controls feature. To pause a specific device, tap Devices at the top. To freeze Wi-Fi for a group of devices, tap the Family Wi-Fi heading halfway down the page. Return to the same place, and use the Unpause link, to unfreeze Wi-Fi.

NETGEAR

Log in to your NETGEAR router and look for the parental controls section to pause the whole network at once or individual devices. The router is accessible through its IP address, the Router Login web page, or NETGEAR apps: Orbi, Nighthawk, or Circle. To turn on Wi-Fi for that device again, select Resume Internet Access.

Below are directions for pausing Wi-Fi from an Archer C7 V5. The process is similar to other TP-Link router models. To freeze Wi-Fi for the whole network, select Parental Controls. On some versions of the app, you can tap the toggle next to the device to pause the internet.

Some D-Link routers have a big pause button front and center. For example, on the DIR-1260, press Pause Internet Access, from the Home tab to instantly pause Wi-Fi for all connected devices. It’s called Pause Internet Access for clients on some devices, like the DIR-X1870. Most D-Link routers let you create profiles that contain specific devices. Once you’ve done that, pausing said devices is as simple as selecting the pause option in that profile. If your router has D-Link defend enabled, and it’s connected to Alexa, you can pause Wi-Fi through your smart speaker:

Can I Pause My Home Internet?

Technically, no matter what brand of router they use, anyone can pause Wi-Fi by simply shutting off the router or disabling Wi-Fi from the device. However, depending on your reasons for freezing Wi-Fi, you might prefer a different approach; otherwise, the internet will be disabled for everyone. If you come at it from a parental control angle, the person using the device won’t be able to turn on Wi-Fi again since it’ll be blocked at the admin level. Newer routers with parental control features can support features such as website blocking, content filtering, and on-demand or scheduled offline times. Most newer routers are paired with a mobile app to make using those features much easier to manage than they might sound. Look in your router’s documentation, or visit the manufacturer’s website, to learn how that works. You can start by reading up on some parental control setup directions. If the directions above are irrelevant for your router—maybe you have an old one—it probably still supports a security feature to kick users off the network. MAC address filtering is one example where you can add specific devices to a block list so that they can’t use the internet. For this to work as “Wi-Fi pausing,” you’d have to unblock the device when you want to unfreeze their access. Another method, though not recommended because of how tedious it would be to reverse each time the device needs Wi-Fi again, is to change the Wi-Fi password. It will effectively lock out anyone using the old password out of Wi-Fi; it’ll resume when you reinstate the original password. This technique isn’t ideal if you only want to pause Wi-Fi for specific devices.