For someone who travels a lot via flight, airplane mode is the best method for switching off the phone’s cellular connection. However, doing so disables every wireless connection of your smartphone, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Although Google enabled Bluetooth to stay on in airplane mode since the Android 11 update, laborious Wi-Fi toggling is still a thing. Therefore, you must manually switch it back on to use a plane’s built-in Wi-Fi network. That, however, has finally changed with the latest Pixel update.

After this month’s Pixel Feature Drop, you will get a new pop-up notification when you turn on airplane mode. The Pixel support page explains that keeping the Wi-Fi option on will stay on the next time you turn on airplane mode. And “your phone will remember your previous setting.”

This means you can now keep Wi-Fi on or off by default -whichever option you choose – and it will stick with that option every time you trigger airplane mode. The next time you use airplane mode, a prompt will remind you of your decision and that you can disable Wi-Fi or vise-versa while in airplane mode and set it as the default behavior.

One of the primary purposes of the Bluetooth feature is to keep your headphone and smartwatch, among other accessories, connected to your phone. While Bluetooth, if active, stays active even after you enable the airplane more since Android 11, users have wished for a similar feature for Wi-Fi when they only want to turn off cellular service. Now, you can finally do just that.

It is a small but rather convenient feature to have. And since the help page specifically mentions Android phones with Android 11 and up, this is not a Pixel-exclusive function and will eventually roll out to other devices soon.

Via: 9to5Google