Turn off ‘ask to join networks’ - mine been that ways for 10 years and it’s much better.

I...don't want my phone to automatically connect to random open access points? I live in a city where there are at least 5 separate open networks available at nearly all times if you're just walking around, most of which I do not want to connect to.

Not sure you understand the feature here - this controls wether you are prompted to join a network you've never seen. It doesn't automatically join those networks if you disable it, it merely silences the incessant prompts.

Turning off "ask to join networks" also stops your phone from connecting to open networks automatically. It will still autoconnect to networks that you have previously connected to, though, unless you explicitly tell it to forget that network.

Exactly. Also: auto-joining open WiFi networks—especially generically-named ones—is a pretty serious security risk. So easy to spoof an SSID and capture everything that's traversing it.

Unless you use a VPN.

Alas, there's no auto-enable-upon-connection VPN, of which I'm aware. And if your device connects to an open SSID while in your pocket, you're not even aware of it.

I hate both. If "ask" is on, it's constantly harassing me. If "ask" is off, I have to search hard to find the setting that lets me connect to a wifi network in a tool that also lets me change the language I'm using.

This isn't quite fair. It may be better to have a menu from the Wifi toggle in the Control Center, but it's two clicks (Settings, Wifi) to show the list of wifi networks. It's not that hard or obtuse to locate.

2 taps hardly qualifies as having to 'search hard' - and even that is only the first time you need to connect to a brand new network. This smacks of exaggeration for the sake of creating drama where there is none.

This and removing buttons from the landscape keyboard.

Turn off “Ask to join networks”

So why not just actually turn your wifi off? They didn't remove your ability to do so, just changed the way you do it.

I mean, I can. It's just an annoying pain in the ass, now, rather than a simple toggle. Which was a stupid decision on Apple's part.

Is it more or less annoying than having to dismiss the list of available wifi networks?

This change might be inconvenient for you personally, but I suspect there's no way in hell Apple would have made this change if they didn't have robust data on the way their average customer uses their device and didn't believe that this was a positive change.

Try "Hey Siri, turn off WiFi."

Five words isn't much beyond a simple toggle. :)

Ironically you possibly need WiFi (since siri operates remotely) to turn it off.