How to Get on Starbucks Wifi. Every Time.

t-shirt from ThinkGeekI love free Wifi. We all do. Except when we can’t get on. Sometimes their default login page stubbornly refuses to appear.

Your friends will tell you, “Oh, just type in Google.com, or any site and the page will pop up.” Except that doesn’t always work. And restarting your browser works about 80% of the time.

It’s that one time you really need to get online that the login page refuses to load, right?

I have a simple trick that works on any browser for getting online. Use localhost. Localhost is sort of a default IP address for your computer. Its your computer’s home. [Learn more about localhost here] It’s easy to access it. Just type in http://127.0.0.1. That’s one-two-seven-dot-zero-dot-zero-dot-one. Easy.

On some machines, using 127.1.1.1 will work just as well. On FreeBSD and some Macs, the default mapping is 127.0.0.1 for reasons too technical for my feeble brain to grasp.

On newer machines, you can also simply type http://localhost and it will change it to the numeric values. The main thing is, this always calls up the login page in a Wifi environment (not just Starbucks; use it anywhere Wifi is being finicky).


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7 responses to “How to Get on Starbucks Wifi. Every Time.”

  1. Linda Avatar
    Linda

    It didn’t work for me!

    1. Dave Linabury Avatar

      Starbucks recently changed their login process. Now you have to wait for a popup screen (sometimes as long as 5 minutes!). The nice part is, you don’t even need to open your browser anymore. It should come up from anywhere on your computer/tablet/phone.

  2. Shey Crompton Avatar
    Shey Crompton

    That is an excellent top-tip. Thanks. I will be directing people to your article as often as possible. 

    Just one point. Once you have “Gone home” (could we call it E.T.’d) then you put in another website and the browser will redirect to the login page. At least that’s what happened with me. 

  3. thecommenter Avatar
    thecommenter

    Most of the time, the Starbucks wifi login screen pops up with no problems. In the instances when it doesn’t, I’ve tried the solution above. It has never worked. In those cases, any idea what the problem may be?

    1. Pete & Lesa D Avatar

      I agree, I tried that today and nothing. I get anip address but o login screen

      1. Dave Linabury Avatar

        Starbucks recently changed their login process. Now you have to wait for a popup screen (sometimes as long as 5 minutes!). The nice part is, you don’t even need to open your browser anymore. It should come up from anywhere on your computer/tablet/phone.

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