If you have a Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III, you know what I’m talking about.  We’re not just talking about a something in the notification bar or the drop down, it’s a pop-up letting you know there is WiFi available in the area.  Sounds harmless, and we know that it saves battery to be on WiFi versus not.  Also with these new shared plans it may be pretty advantageous to be on WiFi as often as you can.  It’s also understandable why one would want to turn this notification feature off.  If you’re in an area where you can’t get on a WiFi network, but you get continual pop-ups telling you you should whenever you’re in range of one, I could see myself pretty irritated by it.  So just turn it off right?  Well, on the Verizon device you can’t.  Other Galaxy S III variants have the ability to turn this feature off, But if you have a Verizon device, you just have to deal with it…  until now.  Droid-Life has posted a method to get rid of this annoying feature apparently provided by one of their readers named Brandon, but you have to be rooted.  Here’s the method:

1. Use an SQL editor like SQLite Editor, which can easily downloading from the Google Play Store.  This app is not free, there may be other free methods.  It has been demonstrate working with this app.
2. Using the SQL editor, browse through storage>settings.db>secure
3. Once in Secure, locate line which reads “wifi_networks_available_notification_on” and long press.  On Droid-Life they showed it as line 86, some have found it on line 10.
4. Select “Edit Record” and change the value to 0 (zero)
5. Save and reboot

The method seems super straight forward.  If you hop on over the Droid-Life, they have some images to go along with it.  I don’t have a Verizon Galaxy S III to confirm this working, but it looks like its working for most users.  Let us know how the method worked for you and how you’re liking your WiFi pop-up free device…

Droid-Life