How to connect your Raspberry Pi to a WiFi network with raspi-config in Raspbian Stretch

When you own a Raspberry Pi with in-built WiFi or an attached USB WiFi adapter, you will be able to connect it to a WiFi network.

Given that WiFi connectivity, you can use then your Raspberry Pi as a HTTP server and/or a HTTP client on the Internet without using a network cable.

When you have installed Raspbian Stretch on your Raspberry Pi, you can use raspi-config to connect your Raspberry Pi to a WiFi network. For this purpose, you can follow the steps mentioned in this post.

First, open a Terminal window by clicking on the highlighted icon at the top:

Raspbian Stretch 20181113 desktop with a terminal window

Once the terminal window had started, type the following command in the terminal window:

sudo raspi-config

Raspbian Stretch 20181113 terminal window with sudo raspi-config

After raspi-config loads in your terminal, go through the following screens to connect your Raspberry Pi to a WiFi network:

Select Network Options on the first menu of raspi-config:
raspi-config on Raspbian Stretch 20181113 with Network Options selected

When the Network Options menu loads, select Wi-fi:

raspi-config on Raspbian Stretch 20181113 with Wi-fi selected

After you had selected Wi-fi, raspi-config will prompt for the SSID of the wireless network that you wish to connect to. Therefore, enter the SSID of the wireless network to connect to:

raspi-config on Raspbian Stretch 20181113 asking for SSID of the Wi-fi network to connect to

When raspi-config gets the SSID of the wireless network, it will prompt for a passphrase. In case the wireless network does not require a passphrase to connect to, leave the input empty. Otherwise, enter the passphrase for the wireless network that you wish to connect to:

raspi-config on Raspbian Stretch 20181113 asking for passphrase of the Wi-fi network

When you had entered the passphrase, raspi-config returns to the first menu. At this point in time, select Finish to complete the configuration:

Raspbian Stretch 20181113 raspi-config initial screen with Finish selected

When you had done so, raspi-config prompts you to reboot Raspbian Stretch:

Raspbian Stretch 20181113 raspi-config Would you like to reboot now

After your Raspbian Stretch reboots successfully, it will connect to the WiFi network that you had indicated.

About Clivant

Clivant a.k.a Chai Heng enjoys composing software and building systems to serve people. He owns techcoil.com and hopes that whatever he had written and built so far had benefited people. All views expressed belongs to him and are not representative of the company that he works/worked for.