Link / URL to connect to WiFi

I have a group of friends coming over to my place and I have a new Internet connection.

One of the things I often wondered that rather than handing them the ID and the password to connect to the home WiFi (through my router) if it was possible to send them a link/URL that they could just tap on their phones or tablets and the connection would be established then that would really be cool.

Alternatively, if the link provided could automatically select the required SSID and pre-populate with the password and all the user needs to do is tap on the JOIN (if Apple) or CONNECT (if Android) button then that would also be magic.

Please let me know if any of you guys think this is possible.

new thread started with a different idea as advised

Solution 1:

Late answer, but iOS has had a built-in QR reader in the native Camera app since iOS 11 (released about 2 months after you asked this question.) It supports the same Wi-Fi QR codes as all the Android apps based on the ZXing library. So it's about as universal a solution as you're going to get, given the challenge of standardizing anything in Android.

You can generate these codes using an online service, or using the QR generator of your choice and feeding it this text:

WIFI:S:My_SSID;T:WPA;P:key goes here;H:false;
^    ^         ^     ^               ^
|    |         |     |               +-- hidden SSID (true/false)
|    |         |     +-- WPA key
|    |         +-- encryption type
|    +-- ESSID
+-- code type

Escape any special characters (", ', ;, ,, or \) with a backslash.