Depending on where you live, there are plenty of places that offer free Wi-Fi connections, allowing you to work or study remotely, or avoid exceeding your smartphone’s data limits. However, some public networks can be quite annoying about the connection process, with all sorts of intermediate login pages that come between you and that sweet wireless network.

Some of these public Wi-Fi networks require users to log in with an email address or other credentials, watch advertisements, and/or agree to usage restrictions before they can access the internet, even after they’ve successfully connected. It’s an annoying extra step, but it’s even worse when these login pages don’t appear in the first place. You may be connected to a Wi-Fi network, but you might as well have turned your device off for all the bits and bytes you’re about to receive.

Luckily, there are a few tricks you can use to force the process to start if the login pages fail to load.

The first and easiest suggestion we have is to reboot your device. If you don’t want to do a full reboot, toggling your device’s Wi-Fi on and off may also work. Once you’ve done either (or both), try reconnecting to your wireless network and opening a website to start the cumbersome login process.