Android 15 Wi-Fi Connected But No Internet Fix

Android 15 broke Wi-Fi for a lot of phones. The fix is usually a private DNS setting or a DHCP renewal, not a factory reset. Here's what actually works.

You installed the Android 15 update last night. This morning your phone shows full Wi-Fi bars, the little Wi-Fi icon has no exclamation mark, and yet nothing loads. Chrome spins. Gmail says offline. WhatsApp messages sit on one grey checkmark. Your laptop on the same network is fine. You toggle airplane mode, forget the network, rejoin — same result. That's the scenario this guide is for.

This is happening most often on Pixel 6 through Pixel 8 after the December 2024 and January 2025 Android 15 quarterly drops (builds AP4A.241205.013 and AP4A.250105.002), and on Samsung Galaxy S23/S24 units that got One UI 7 on top of Android 15. It also hits anyone who was using a custom Private DNS hostname like dns.adguard.com or a Pi-hole DoH endpoint before the update.

Why Android 15 breaks Wi-Fi that worked yesterday

Android 15 tightened how the OS validates an internet connection. There are two changes that matter here.

First, Google switched the default captive portal and connectivity probe. On Android 14 your phone pinged connectivitycheck.gstatic.com. Android 15 uses a stricter check that also verifies DNS-over-TLS handshakes when Private DNS is set to a hostname. If your DNS provider is slow, blocked by your router, or returns NXDOMAIN for the probe domain, Android 15 marks the network as "no internet" and quietly stops routing traffic over it — but the Wi-Fi icon still says connected.

Second, Android 15 changed the default MAC randomization behavior. Your router may have a DHCP reservation or a MAC filter tied to the old randomized address. After the update, your phone generates a new random MAC, the router hands it a stale lease from a full DHCP pool, and you get an IP with no gateway. You're associated to the AP but have no route out.

Either way, the phone thinks the network is up. The problem is upstream of the icon.

The fix — do these in order

Turn off Private DNS. Open Settings → Network & internet → Private DNS. Set it to Automatic, not a hostname. If you were using AdGuard, NextDNS, or a Pi-hole DoH URL, this is almost certainly your problem. After tapping Automatic, you should see the setting save instantly. Give it ten seconds, then open a browser and load example.com. If pages load, you found it. You can re-add your custom DNS later once you confirm the base network works.
Renew the DHCP lease. Go to Settings → Network & internet → Internet, tap the gear next to your Wi-Fi network, then tap Forget. Wait five seconds. Rejoin the network and type the password. Watch the status bar — you should see the Wi-Fi icon disappear and come back. When it returns, pull down the notification shade and check that it says "Connected" rather than "Connected, no internet."
Set MAC to Device MAC, not Randomized. In the same Wi-Fi gear menu, tap Privacy or MAC address type (Samsung labels it "MAC address type"). Choose Use device MAC. Reconnect. If your router has any DHCP reservation, parental control, or access rule tied to your phone, this restores it. This one step fixes the problem on most mesh systems from Eero, Nest, and TP-Link Deco.
Force IPv4 on the router side. If you can log into your router, disable IPv6 temporarily. Android 15's connectivity probe is more aggressive about IPv6-only paths, and some ISP routers advertise IPv6 prefixes they don't actually route. Turn it off, reboot the router, and let your phone reconnect. You should see the exclamation mark clear within 30 seconds.
Reset network settings. This wipes every saved Wi-Fi password, Bluetooth pairing, and APN, so save your Wi-Fi credentials first. Open Settings → System → Reset options → Reset Wi-Fi, mobile & Bluetooth. Tap Reset settings, confirm with your PIN. The phone reboots in about 20 seconds. Reconnect to Wi-Fi and test.
Check for the January 2025 patch. Go to Settings → System → System update. Google shipped a fix for the connectivity probe in the January 2025 Pixel drop. If you're still on the December build, install the update before you do anything more drastic. Samsung pushed an equivalent fix in One UI 7.0 update S928BXXU4BYAA on Galaxy S24 units.

If it still fails after all that

Run these checks before you factory reset. A factory reset wipes your data and rarely fixes this, so skip it until you've ruled out everything below.

Test on another network. Connect to a coffee shop or a phone hotspot. If that works and your home network doesn't, the problem is your router, not Android 15. Factory resetting your phone won't help.
Test another device on the same Wi-Fi. If your laptop also can't reach the internet, it's the router or your ISP. Reboot the router — unplug it for 30 seconds, plug it back in, wait two minutes.
Ping from the phone. Install a terminal app or use ADB from a computer. Run ping -c 4 8.8.8.8. If that succeeds but ping google.com fails, it's DNS. If both fail, it's routing or the AP itself.
Watch the connectivity probe. In ADB, run adb shell dumpsys connectivity | grep -i validation. You'll see whether Android 15 is marking the network as validated. If it says NOT_VALIDATED while traffic flows fine, you've got a captive portal stuck in the background — open a browser and visit http://captive.apple.com to force the portal to appear, then log in.

The real fix in 9 out of 10 cases on Android 15 is step 1 or step 3. Private DNS hostnames and MAC randomization both trip the new connectivity validation. Skip the factory reset, work through the settings above, and you'll be back online in under ten minutes.