When you connect your laptop to a new Wi-Fi network, it's never enough for Windows to
just connect you and be done with it. It always asks you this rather cryptic question about
whether you want your PC to be discoverable on the network, with a warning that you shouldn't do it
if you're sitting at a Starbucks or something. But many folks have never quite understood
what picking one option over the other one means. And even more frustrating is that if you click the
wrong thing or click away from it, it's very difficult to find that prompt again.
So basically what it comes down to is whether you want to use file and device sharing for devices
that would commonly be something like a printer on your local network. And lots of people never
bother with this, but it can be useful. So let's have a look at what answering that question yes
or no actually does and how to take advantage of the associated features.
If you tell Windows that you don't want your computer to be discoverable, it won't let any
other devices on the network see any files or devices that you're sharing either. And this
is simply meant as another layer of protection if you're on a strange network, like one at an
airport, library, or a Tinder dates apartment who you just met like an hour ago. But if you answer
yes, it will allow you to share those things on whatever network you're connected to. So
how do you get that set up? Well, unfortunately, Windows doesn't make it super obvious and the
home group feature that was meant to make file sharing a bit more straightforward
was axed in Windows 10 because ironically, nobody used it. The easiest way to share things locally
is to create a folder containing everything that you'd like your friends or roommates or whoever
to have access to. And you can do this after creating and filling up the folder by right
clicking on it, then going give access to then selecting specific people. You'll see a menu
pop up and in that drop down box, you can select everyone if you just want to share that folder
broadly with everyone on your local network. Though it's very important to be sure to select
what permission level you'd like to give other users. You can select read if you don't want
anyone modifying the files like if you're sharing a game cache or something. Then all you need to
do is click share and you'll be given a path to send to the other users on your network. Just
have them type it into the file explorer address bar a voila. Your files are now available network
wide. If instead you only want to share with certain people, you can make another user account on
your computer with a password and then type that username into the box in the sharing window.
Then you can give those credentials to whomever you want to have access to the files
and when they access the appropriate path, they'll be asked to enter them.
But what about sharing a printer? This is actually a little more straightforward
even if the setting itself is buried a little bit. Go to your main Windows 10 settings app,
select devices, then printers and scanners. Whichever printer is connected to your local PC
should pop up. You just select it and click on manage. Now annoyingly you don't get a nice big
button that says share. So instead you need to click on printer properties and in the box that
pops up you should see a tab up top labeled sharing. Click it then check the box that says
share this printer. Give it a funny name or just anything that people on your network will recognize
then click okay. Now as long as the host computer is turned on anyone on the network should be able
to add the printer from that same printers and scanners menu by clicking the printer I want
isn't listed then entering the path in this format or just browsing for it. Now I know that
there are more advanced and more secure ways to share files and printers across the network
which I'm sure our viewers will be happy to discuss in the comments. But hopefully this guide
has demystified the topic a bit and will help get you up and running. As for me, I'm not gonna
bother because I never learned to share as a kid and besides, printer ink is expensive. Thanks for
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