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Unable to automatically connect to hidden networks on Ubuntu 20.04. Set up 2 connections, 5G and 24G, both hidden networks. Connections connect manually fine. Tried setting BSSID as noted in another post- did not work. Tried with setting only 1 connection, still no auto-connect to hidden network. Also System Settings (gnome-control-center) hangs up intermittently when making/ editing these settings. (No files in /var/crash/) Everything worked fine in 18.04 and this is a fresh install of 20.04. Install is on Dell XPS 13 that was originally configured for Ubuntu 14.04.

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  • There would only be a crash file if it crashes. You have not said anything about a crash. Are you sure you have a 24G network?
    – David
    Mar 12, 2022 at 16:49
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    System Settings which I believe is gnome-control-center becomes unresponsive and quits working. When the laptop was running 18.04 it could connect to both hidden networks no problem. Both networks are run from a single router and connect to various other Android devices without a problem
    – user183551
    Mar 14, 2022 at 13:26
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    Ubuntu 20.04 does not connect to hidden network automatically on start. Ubuntu 20.04 will only connect to hidden network when manually asked to.
    – user183551
    Mar 21, 2022 at 14:51

2 Answers 2

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I remember this one. The solution is easy. (For me anyways)

  1. Make sure that your SSID is hidden.

  2. Start your laptop or PC for that matter and go to the Wi-Fi settings.

  3. Right from the W-Fi on/off slide button click on the three vertical dots and select "Known Wi-Fi Networks". Your SSID should be there. Click on the configure circle on the right and select "Forget Connection"

  4. Click again on the three vertical dots and select "Connect to Hidden Network" and fill out your network details. SSID and password is enough unless your network requires more.

  5. Restart the system and it should connect automatically now.

I believe this happened when I connected to my SSID when it was not hidden and afterwards changed to hidden.

Hope this solved your problem. Goodluck

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    Thanks for the effort. Tried this and my laptop still won't connect to the hidden network automatically.
    – user183551
    Mar 21, 2022 at 14:52
  • I confirm the answer. It is unexpected, but using 'Settings', Ubuntu 20.04 cannot reuse a WIFI network that was made 'hidden' afterwards. We have first to 'forget the connection' and recreate a new one. Jan 30, 2023 at 1:43
  • What if the network was never visible? Like, I connected in the first place with step 4, so why should I need to do step 3 just to do step 4 again? Like, is this a bug that should get filed, or... ?
    – lindes
    Aug 27, 2023 at 13:20
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I was facing the same issue on my laptop with Ubuntu 20.04. I resolved it using the following command.

1 - List your connection's settings:

nmcli connection show your_wifi_name

2 - Set auto-connect to yes: Search for connection.autoconnect value; If it is set to "yes" skip this step. If it is set to "no" then use the following command to set it to "yes".

nmcli connection modify NAME/UUID connection.autoconnect yes

3 - Set hidden wireless setting to yes: use this command to set wireless.hidden to yes

nmcli connection modify NAME/UUID 802-11-wireless.hidden yes

4 - Restart Network service

sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service
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  • This didn't entirely work for me (if nothing else, I get Failed to restart network-manager.service: Unit network-manager.service not found. for that last part), but voting up anyway because it had useful pointers to tools I could use to help debug. Even just nmcli connection show (without the network name, or with --active in its place) was useful, and the detailed view when I do supply the name (or uuid) of the network was also informative. Thanks.
    – lindes
    Aug 27, 2023 at 13:27

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