Nothing quite ruins your day like bad Wi-Fi.
It's 2025, so the times of buffering whilst streaming your favourite Netflix show or lagging in your Call of Duty lobbies should be long gone. And ever since work-from-home peaked during the Covid-19 pandemic, reliable internet has become more important than ever.
Now, an unexpected Wi-Fi hack is going viral and those who have reportedly tried it are amazed at the results.
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A viral post that's racked up almost 60 million views on X claims: "Put an aluminium foil behind your Wi-Fi router and thank me later!!!"
As weird as it sounds, tonnes of users are swearing by it.
"Amazing what simple alumium foil can do to a Wi-Fi signal. I now have Wi-Fi in my room that doesn't go out every 5 seconds!" one user wrote.
"Brother it just improves the Wi-Fi signal in the direction away from the foil. It's not a tinfoil hat someone is spying on me conspiracy," another added.
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Others have been confirming the legitimacy of the hack with the platform's AI bot, Grok. One response from the chatbot read: "Puttin' aluminum foil behind your Wi-Fi router can work! It acts like a signal bouncer, boosting strength up to 55% in one direction, but it ain't a sure thing. Gotta place it just right, or you might mess up other spots."
So, what's the science behind the trend?
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Well, your Wi-Fi router sends signals to your device using electromagnetic waves. By placing aluminium foil behind it, you can reflect and redirect those signals, sort of like how a satellite dish works. The set-up shown in the post appears to be designed to catch signals that would otherwise be wasted at the back.
As one user in the comments pointed out: "It may increase signal strength in the forward direction - like a weak DIY directional antenna."
And if that hasn't convinced you, what researchers discovered in 2017 might.
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The team from Dartmouth College and Columbia University used foil to make a 'virtual wall' which could funnel Wi-Fi signals around the house. Something as basic as aluminium was capable of boosting Wi-Fi signal.
In some tests, using a foil 'reflector' boosted signal strength by up to 55% in some areas of the house. However, the catch was that network signal was reduced in other areas as, in the same study, the signal dropped by up to 63% in areas blocked by the foil.
At the end of the day, it's what you consider a bigger loss.