Prior to the Material Design changes, Chrome OS used to use shill's network sort order in the system menu's wifi panel. The sorting logic in Service::Compare is fairly complex, but it roughly follows this:
- Connected services are at the top of the list
- Known services are near the top of the list (e.g. SSIDs that have been used before)
- Unknown services are prioritized based on the technology sort order. i.e. ethernet on top, then wifi, then cellular.
- More secure services are prioritized above less secure services. AES is better than RC4.
- Higher signal strength is prioritized above lower signal strength.
Post-MD, Chrome re-sorts the list and does not use most of these factors. As a result, most of the unconnected networks on the wifi list are essentially sorted by GUID. This is a UX regression, as users generally want to see stronger networks on top. Users do not know about GUIDs.
The proposed change is to remove the Chrome sort and fall back to the shill sort.
Comment 1 by bugdroid1@chromium.org
, Jun 15 2017