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Comment by sangnoir | Hacker News Reader

Android detects wifi with captive portals automatically and pops-up a notification that says "Wifi network requires sign-in". Clicking on that takes you to non-HTTPS page in a browser that is intended to be intercepted.

There is no reason why Apple can't add captive portal detection at OS level like Android does.

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As the OP said, that is already in iOS - it is just that more and more captive portals are whitelisting the domains it hits to check for a captive portal.

> captive portals are whitelisting the domains it hits to check for a captive portal.

Why?

As the OP said,

> ...so iOS will think it is connected to a good network... The stated reason for this stupidity? The mini-browser that pops up doesn't work with their stupid captive portal login or payment page.

It doesn't work so well. Sometimes I have to try every single browser on my phone or tablet and different sites. Eventually one of them triggers the captive portal detection. Sometimes I just give up.

Any Android from 4 to 7. I guess it depends on how much the portal is trying to be smart.

Getting it working correctly can be annoying. There is actually a HTTP status code for captive portal redirection (511), but nothing supports it. So if you use it, captive portal detection stops working.

Apple already has captive portal detection, but it doesn't redirect to a whole browser - it just displays a mini browser with a Safari WebView.

Yes, Android 6.0 will be extremely annoying when trying to get you to click the captive portal.

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