As one of the world’s topmost electronic brands, Samsung has been the top-selling TV manufacturer for 16 years in a row and produces one of the best smart TVs. With its huge asset, the South Korean conglomerate continues to come up with technological innovations in smart TVs.
So, if you have just bought a Samsung smart TV, you’d be thrilled to connect it to your home Wi-Fi. While Samsung’s TV operating system (called the Tizen OS) boasts high-tech features, the platform is not the best TV OS in terms of user-friendliness. However, you don’t have to be a techie nerd to operate the system as long as you can follow the steps. A point to note is that Tizen OS was released in 2015 to replace the Samsung smart TV OS. So, your older Samsung TV model won’t work on Tizen OS.
In this guide, we will show you how to connect Samsung smart TV to Wi-Fi with a username and password. Once connected, you will have access to extensive services such as downloading and streaming a multitude of TV and video apps or searching the internet, almost like how you can do it over the computer.
Connecting your TV to Wi-Fi
Follow these steps to connect your Samsung smart TV to your Wi-Fi:
- Plug your Samsung smart TV into a power source and switch it on.
- Your Samsung smart TV comes with a remote. Grab the remote, look for the Home button and press it.
- Use the direction button to move the cursor to the left, where you can find the TV’s Menu.
- Next, go to the Settings and then select All Settings.
(An alternative method to get to the Settings is to press the SOURCE button at the top right of the remote. Then you can see the Settings gear-like icon at the bottom left of the TV screen. Press the gear icon.)
- Next, select Connections > Network.
- Then open the Network Settings.
- Next, you can see two options – Wireless and Wired. For Wi-fi connection, select Wireless.
- You will view a list of adjacent Wi-Fi networks. Select your desired network by pressing on the SSID (that’s your Wi-Fi name).
Note: Specific 2018 Samsung TV models don’t support 5GHz Wi-Fi networks, so your 5GHz Wi-Fi name will not appear on the list.
- Key in your password to get connected and press Done.
- You’re connected to Wi-Fi when you see the following screen displaying “Success! Your TV is connected to the internet”.
- The last step is to click OK, and basically, you can bring up whatever things you like that require the internet.
- In the future, you don’t have to go through the same lengthy process again to connect to Wi-Fi. Just go to the quick settings panel and click on your Wi-Fi name under the Wi-Fi panel.
Connecting Samsung Smart TV to Wi-Fi – Step-by-Step Instructions
Troubleshooting
Occasionally, you will encounter a situation where you cannot connect your Samsung smart TV to your Wi-Fi network. If that happens, do the following troubleshooting methods to fix the issue:
- Reboot your Samsung smart TV by turning it off and after about a minute, turn it back on.
- Ensure your Wi-Fi network is working properly. If you’re not sure, try connecting another device like a phone or tablet to the same network and try to browse the web to see if it’s working.
- Check if your router has MAC filtering enabled (Access Control). In this case, you need to manually add your Samsung TV’s MAC address to ‘whitelist it’ in your router’s settings before you can connect it to your Wi-Fi network. The other option is to completely disable Access Control (aka MAC Filtering) on your router. Here’s how to find your Samsung smart TV’s MAC address:
-
- Go to the Settings again.
- Next, select Support.
- Then, select About this TV.
- Scroll down until you can see the MAC address. You will see two addresses – wired and wireless. Why two? Well, because your TV will use its Ethernet interface when connected to the Wi-Fi router via Ethernet cable (Wired MAC), and will use its Wi-Fi interface (Wi-Fi card) when connected to the Wi-Fi router wirelessly (Wireless MAC).
How to Find Your Samsung TV’s Wired/Wireless MAC Address
- Move your Samsung smart TV closer to the router, or if you have an Access Point, place it close to the TV.
- Change to a wired Ethernet connection – you can get a faster signal. Connect one end of the Ethernet cable to your router’s LAN port and the other end to the TV port. Then follow the same method of connecting to the Wi-Fi mentioned above, but choose the Wired connection instead of Wireless.
- Try resetting network settings. This will erase all your saved networks, and you will have to reconnect to your Wi-Fi (repeat the entire process) after resetting the network settings.
How to Reset Network Settings on a Samsung Smart TV
- If resetting network settings doesn’t work, you could try to update your TV’s firmware. You would need a computer and a USB flash drive to do it since your TV is offline.
How to Update Your Samsung Smart TV Firmware Using a USB Drive
- Finally, if none of the methods explained above don’t work, you may have to reset your Samsung TV to factory default settings. Watch the video below to learn how.
How to Factory Reset a Samsung Smart TV
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Can I reset the Wi-Fi connection on my Samsung smart TV?
Answer: Yes, you can do that by going to the Settings > General > Network > Reset Network. It will restore the network settings back to factory default values. Then, click the network settings again and choose your Wi-Fi network.
Question: Can I watch my smart TV without the internet?
Answer: Yes, you can watch your Samsung smart TV without connecting it to the internet. It has a pre-installed app that you can use offline. In addition, you can also watch downloaded movies.
Question: Do I need to install antivirus software on my Samsung smart TV?
Answer: Technically, your Samsung smart TV is a computer where you can access the internet via Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet connections. Yes, that means a virus can enter your TV system, and you need to install antivirus software to protect it. However, that’s easier said than done because Samsung did not design your TV to have an antivirus program in its OS. In short, you don’t have to install an antivirus program on your TV since Samsung has taken care of the safety of its OS and ensures the pre-installed apps have no malicious coding whatsoever.
Conclusions
In this post, you have learned how to connect your Samsung smart TV to Wi-Fi with a username and password. The Tizen OS is advanced and liked by many techies. The process of connecting your Samsung smart TV to Wi-Fi is one of the reasons why so many people like it. It’s so straightforward and quick.
We have also shown a few basic troubleshooting techniques in case you cannot connect your TV to Wi-Fi using the said method.
