Wi-Fi Ruler keeps your phone away from bad networks

There are plenty of Android WiFi managers that tell your phone which networks to use, but what about an app that tells your phone which networks to ignore?

Rogue access points, public networks that look open but send you to a payment page, or the routers of your neighbours that spill their waves into your house, there are plenty of WiFi networks out there that you want your phone to stay away from.

Enter Wi-Fi Ruler. Its interface is barren, its icon is ugly, but it does a good job at keeping your phone out of unwanted networks. You can feed it a list of networks that it should never touch. Of course you can also tell it which networks it should connect to whenever possible, and its network priority slider lets you fine tune things even more.

The latest update does a better job at finding out if you switch WiFi on or off outside Wi-Fi Ruler, like when you toggle WiFi from a widget or with a scheduling app.

Wi-Fi Ruler still has some issues to deal with. Sometimes when you try to set rules for a network it remembered it refuses to do so. It won't let you export your rules to share with other devices either, although you can work around this by sending Titanium backups to your other Android gadgets.

Tip for users of DroidWall, LBE Privacy Guard, etc.: Wi-Fi Ruler does not need permission to go online. If you firewall the app it will keep working.

• Wi-Fi Ruler (Android Market)