Bluetooth and Wi-Fi items in Power are worded ambiguously

[Leo Arias]

In the gnome-control-center, in the power section, there is a checkbox that says:

Wi-Fi
Turn off Wi-Fi to save power

I have it checked, so after a few minutes without using my computer, the wi-fi is disabled. I want to keep my wi-fi working, so I unchecked this box, but it disables my wi-fi immediately.

So, it's obviously wrong to disable the wi-fi when I click that checkbox. And I don't seem to have a way to keep my wi-fi enabled.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.26.2-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-10.11-generic 4.15.3
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-10-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.8-0ubuntu10
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Feb 26 18:27:16 2018
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-10-04 (145 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Beta amd64 (20170930)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=eo
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2017-11-17 (101 days ago)

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

Same bug reported for redhat: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1495433

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

That is literally the off switch for Wi-Fi. It is not a "turn off wifi when my screensaver turns on" switch.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I'm going to go ahead and close this bug. You're welcome to try to talk to the GNOME Design Team about this if you think it is confusing. The best way to reach them is via IRC. They can be found in the #gnome-design channel on irc.gnome.org during European business hours.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

See also https://bugzilla.gnome.org/765279

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

Oh, yes, very bad design :) Thanks for the info and the link Jeremy!

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Ok, I reopened this and adjusted the bug title a bit.

[Tom Reynolds (tomreyn)]

Point to currently open bug on GNOME Gitlab (which has further references to related bug reports)

[Tom Reynolds (tomreyn)]

This appears to have been partially fixed upstream at
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/53

However, the description is still ambiguous as reported at
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/681 (now tracked here)

It would be nice to see this fixed in bionic, too, if GNOME can come up with a better solution.

[zespri (andrewsav)]

Also reported here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1296506/ubuntu-20-04-why-does-turning-off-wi-fi-can-be-turned-off-to-save-power-turn

[Andrew-Q (andrew-qq)]

It says above fix released in August, however I still have the bad wording and it has caught me out today. I'm running Ubuntu 20.04.03 gnome 3.36.8. Why has the fix not reached me yet please?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The fix is in gnome-control-center version 41 and later. So that's in Ubuntu 22.04 only right now. And in fact it was only released to Ubuntu 22.04 in November/December.

This doesn't appear to be a severe bug. I'm not sure if such a design change is appropriate for some future 20.04.x release. If you think it is then you can add tag 'rls-ff-incoming'.