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Oct 16, 2015 - 47 Comments

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Though Apple has largely resolved the wi-fi issues that persisted in some Macs with prior OS X
releases, some users with OS X El Capitan may encounter wireless networking issues after

OSXDaily

updating to the latest OS X release. Typically the wi-fi problems are in the form of dropping

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connections or strangely slow speeds, and the good news is theyre usually an easy fix.
+ 7,990

For most Mac users who are experiencing

issues with wi-fi connections in OS X El
Capitan, simply ditching old preference
files, followed by creating a new network
location with custom DNS settings and an
MTU change is enough to resolve
whatever wi-fi problems they may have
had. This is a multi-step process but not
particularly dicult.
Youre going to be deleting a few system
level preference files and creating a new
network location. Before getting started, you should start and complete a backup of the Mac
with Time Machine. Dont skip backups.

Trash Existing Wi-Fi Preferences in OS X to Start Fresh

1. Create a new folder on your Desktop called wifi prefs backup or something obvious
2. Turn o Wi-Fi from the menu item in the upper right corner of OS X
3. Go to the Finder (the smiley face icon in the Dock), and hit Command+Shift+G to bring up

+1

the Go To Folder command, choose the following path exactly:

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

4. Hit return to go to that folder, then locate and select the following files:
com.apple.airport.preferences.plistcom.apple.network.identification.plist
com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist

5. Move all of these files into the folder you created in step 1 on the desktop (you can also
delete them if youre confident and have made a backup)
6. Reboot the Mac
7. Turn on Wi-Fi from the wireless network menu again in the upper right corner of OS X
If your wi-fi works now, great, but for most users, youre not quite finished yet! Now you need to
create a new custom network location.

Create a New Wi-Fi Network Location with Custom DNS

1. Quit any open apps that are using wi-fi or networking (Chrome, Safari, Mail, etc)
2. Go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences
3. Choose the Network control panel, then choose Wi-Fi from the list on the left side
4. Click the Location menu and select Edit Locations, then click the [+] plus button to
create a new location, giving the new location an easily identifiable name like Fixing My
WiFi and click Done to add it

5. Next to Network Name join the wi-fi network and authenticate with the router password
as usual
6. Next, select the Advanced button in the lower corner of Network preferences, then go to
the TCP/ IP tab, choose Renew DHCP Lease

7. Next go to the DNS tab, and on the left side DNS Servers list, click the [+] plus button
to add a new DNS server* I use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for Google DNS but you can choose
whatever you want

8. Next, choose the Hardware tab, then next to Configure choose Manually
9. Change MTU to Custom and set the MTU number to 1453, then click on OK

10. Finally, choose the Apply button to set your network changes
* If youre not sure what DNS to use, you can find the fastest DNS servers for your situation
with a benchmarking utility. Typically the fastest servers are Google DNS and OpenDNS, but
results may vary per region.
Now wireless connectivity should be working flawlessly in OS X, and back at full speed. Try
things out by navigating around the web, doing a speed test, and just using the internet as usual.
The solution outlined above almost always works to resolve wireless networking issues in OS X,
particularly if they occur after updating to a new version of system software or a point release.

Additional Wi-Fi Troubleshooting Tips

If youre still having trouble with wi-fi in OS X 10.11 or later, try the following:
Reboot the Mac in the Safe Mode, then reboot again (this dumps caches)
Reboot the Wi-Fi router the Mac connects to
Update the Wi-Fi router firmware if an update is available
Join a 2.4 GHz network N network rather than a 5 GHz G network or B network
Reset the Mac SMC
Extreme: try to clean install OS X El Capitan
Extreme: if all else fails, downgrade from OS X EL Capitan to the prior version of OS X

on the same Mac with Time Machine

Have you had wi-fi issues or speed problems with OS X El Capitan? Did this work to resolve
them for you? Let us know in the comments, or if you had another solution, let us know that too!

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks, Troubleshooting

47 Comments
Comments RSS Feed

Job's Ghost says:

October 16, 2015 at 12:39 pm

Let the whining commence!

Reply

49ers says:
October 16, 2015 at 3:47 pm

Wi-Fi is much better in El Capitan since they brought back mDNSResponder, it all
generally works as intended now.
The one quirk I have seen with wireless networking in OS X EL Capitan is that some

wifi networks will not re-join automatically on waking from sleep, which is a bug that
has been around on the Mac for a long time.
Otherwise, for me, El Capitan is much better than Yosemite ever was.
Reply

Daria says:
October 16, 2015 at 2:36 pm

The N network should be 5 ghz and B/G 2.4 ghz.

Reply

Rorschach says:
October 16, 2015 at 3:32 pm

Why cant I save this tip to my Desktop from the Safari browser with Export As PDF ?
Did you people intentionally block that option ?
Reply

Rorschach says:
October 16, 2015 at 3:34 pm

OK. Did a page reload, this time the options was available and I was able to save it as
a PDF.
Dont know why it was grayed out the first time.
Thanks, interesting tip.
Reply

Paul says:
October 16, 2015 at 3:45 pm

No definitely not, we encourage saving as PDF for reading oine and troubleshooting!
Glad you got it figured out, try the Print to PDF option if you continue to have
problems saving.
Reply

Steve says:
October 16, 2015 at 6:29 pm

Pro tip: Always go to reader view before exporting to PDF so you just save the
article, not the comments and ads.
Reply

Jim Anderson says:

October 16, 2015 at 3:50 pm

Step 4, written instructions identifying 5 files to delete but does not match screen shot!
Waddup????? Whos proofing this stu?
Reply

Chocolate Charlie says:

October 16, 2015 at 4:57 pm

Some users will have the 5th file, some wont. If its there, delete it. If its not there,
dont worry about it.
Reply

Brendan says:
October 16, 2015 at 4:17 pm

I find none of the files mentioned in the article. Mac was originally the system before
Yosemite.
Reply

trampoline says:
October 16, 2015 at 4:54 pm

Is your wi-fi working? The files are generated by OS X, they must exist if networking is
there.
Reply

AndyLynn says:
October 16, 2015 at 5:02 pm

MBP 13inch, mid 2010

ive had *horrible* WiFi erratics with both Yosemite & El Capitan. truly disgusting.
deleting the SystemPreferences files worked 1 out of 4 reboots,
but ive now found that conducting a full Onyx clean-out is
*much* more reliable. WiFi works on 1 out of 2 reboots.
(Onyx v 3.1.0)
Reply

Lorna Gray says:

October 16, 2015 at 6:14 pm

Good Luck to the people with problems. It took more than a year for them to fix Yosemite
Wi Fi problems. And never once during that time did Apple admit that the nightmare I was
having with my WiFi connection was not my fault.
It cost me money for private techs to look at my computer, and sleepless nights for a year.
Reply

Mike1952 says:
October 16, 2015 at 11:28 pm

The problem with this fix is that if you use Keychain Access on several devices, all the old
preferences keep returning. I have connections to old networks dating back 5 years or more
that Id love to get rid of.
Reply

Karen Mne says:

October 17, 2015 at 2:53 am

As a Mac consultant working on the connection issues over the past few upgrades of their
OS, I discovered the following;
many routers today are dual broadcast and they have several encryption methods preset.
Removing the encryption that works with 2.4 Ghz and setting both bands to use the
encryption that works with 5 Ghz has been the answer to many connection problems.
A single encryption type setting and not several on the router fixes the problem. Use the 5
Ghz encryption for both.
For some reason when several encryption types are oered on dual band routers, this
causes the connection on the current OSs to either not connect, or become very unstable.
Ive tried every fix oered in this article prior to discovering this, but the only way to fix it

was to set the router to single encryption on both bands.

Reply

Michael C. says:
October 17, 2015 at 6:09 pm

Just want to be sure I understand what you mean by encryption method, do you
mean selecting WPA Personal say vs WPA Enterprise vs WPA Personal 2 (either AES
or TKIP)?
So i.e. if using WPA2 TKIP on the 2.4 band, make sure using the same on the 5 GHz
band? Interestingly, on an Apple Airport using the Airport Utility, there is no option to
use a dierent encryption with the 5 band, it appears to inherit whatever you pick for
2.4. The only settings you can change for the 5Ghz band is the name, channel and
backward compatibility, but NOT a dierent encryption method. Is that your
experience?
If true, that would lead to a conclusion that people with Airports arent experiencing
these wifi issues, only people using non Apple routers? (Since apparently it is not
possible to select a dierent encryption method for dierent bands using Airport
Utility.)
Im very interested in peoples feedback on this, because now that I think about it, all
the friends/co-workers I know who use an Airport router, if not had any these reported
wifi issues, but those who have, primarily those in a work environment, there company
is using non Apple corporate routers in large mixed Windows/Mac environments.
Reply

Karen Mne says:

October 18, 2015 at 1:42 am

Just set both bands to WPA2 which is what I think that 5Ghz has recommended
for it, and this will resolve the problem. It has worked for everyone so far.
Ive never recommended an Apple Airport router or tried to reconfigure one. In
fact, as a Mac consultant Ive tried to avoid them as much as possible for all the
practical reasons!
But if you can reconfigure the router to use just WPA2 on both bands, it will fix
the problem. Having a router with WPA and WPA2 as encryption methods for 2.4
Ghz seems to be the culprit for the connection problems with the latest OSs.
Maybe even back as far as Mavericks and earlier to Snow Leopared.
Reply

Jill Grin says:

October 18, 2015 at 8:19 pm

Karen, how do you do this? I have no idea what to do.

Thank you!
Reply

Nathan Bourgue says:

October 19, 2015 at 1:31 am

Wow, THIS.
I had WiFi problems with a client when he tried to connect to a D-Link AP.
Setting the AP on 5GHz and the cypher type on AES and not Auto (Tkip and
AES) solved all the problems.

For information, the client called Apple and they stayed 3 hours on it, saying
everything was fine on the computer
I will never understand why everybody thinks that Apple is great, seriously.
Anyway, thanks a lot Karen, I would prob
Reply

Carsten says:
October 18, 2015 at 2:11 am

Hi Michael,
I have an Apple TimeMachine at home and I have the same problems than I have
in my companies WiFi where they have definitive non Apple routers and access
points.
As 49ers already pointed out Apple brought the mDNSResponder back in OS-X
10.10.5 which fixes most issues. Since than I can arrange myself with the issues
that persist which is basically the interference between WiFi and Bluetooth.
When the TimeMachine backup starts my Trackpad disconnects
I dont want to go through this Yosemite nightmare again. Honestly I am extreme
reluctant to update to El Capitan and reading again about WiFi problems and
problems with MS Oce I sure will stay with 10.10.5.
Reply

george says:
October 17, 2015 at 8:44 am

this solved my problem. Cool! thanks

Reply

Francis Copack says:

October 17, 2015 at 12:28 pm

I am a Mac user many years, and many years to come. Still, I find it astonishing and
amusing that in 2015, when we are just around the corner from AIs arrival into the
mainstream of daily life, we are still having to spend time with these palaeolithic issues and
fixes.
Wi-Fi connectivity, in 2015, should not even be a conversation topic it is
INFRASTRUCTURAL. Apple should be able to address ALL these, pedestrian items with
realtime updates TRANSPARENT TO THE USERS.
To even find these issues in a latest OS release is a sign of MEDIOCRE functionality design
integration. This is not excellence.
Apple should have fixed this BEFORE it was broken. Cheers.
Reply

Pippa says:
October 17, 2015 at 2:41 pm

Thank you, thank you!! We have been trying to fix this for over a month and this worked
immediately.
Reply

Jill Grin says:

October 18, 2015 at 8:18 pm

How do I do this? I am messing about in settings and dont know what Im doing. My
network already says WPA/WPA2 Personal.
Thanks
Reply

Karen Mne says:

October 19, 2015 at 3:00 am

You need to log into your router. You may have to go into advanced settings.
When you see that one band, the 2.4 Ghz has two encryption types that can be
used, change the setting to one encryption type, the one being used with the 5
Ghz band which is usually WPA2.
Dont have several encryption types available on the bands in your router, only
have one, and this resolves the problem.
Reply

Kreso says:
October 20, 2015 at 1:05 pm

It works thanks
Reply

Stephanie says:
October 17, 2015 at 9:28 pm

Ok, so Im having issues with my wifi. Yesterday I thought Im out of the clear its working,
but today it cut o on me and stopped loading a webpage then it said I had no IP address. I
tried doing the stu above, however, since I wasnt comfortable on what to put as my DNS
server and I know very little about computers, I stuck with the DNS server number I was
using before. Everything else I did as stated above. Wifi worked for awhile before
disconnecting me once again. The only way I can get back online is if I reboot my computer
again. I also had the issue of the computer not wanting to shut down and was taking
forever so I had to do a hard shut down. Ever since El Capitan Ive had issues with my
computer freezing up, taking forever to open a webpage, and disconnecting me from my
wifi (even though my phone had no problems connecting to my wifi). I also did a SMC reset.
Im not great with computers so I dont want to go back to Yosemite if I dont have to
because I dont want to mess up things even more. Any suggestions would be greatly
appreciated. Im fairly disappointed with El Capitan and I hope the issue can be fixed ASAP!
Reply

Serge Waldo says:

October 18, 2015 at 11:12 am

Stephanie, you say that today it cut o on me and stopped loading a webpage then it
said I had no IP address that describes a DNS problem, your ISP assigned DNS is
probably awful (they often are depending on ISP). This is why the instructions specify
to set DNS. But you say you skipped that part of the instructions, and now you still
have wi-fi issues (more like DNS issues). You can reboot however many times you
want it will not address a DNS issue unless you have stale DNS cache after changing
it.
You need to fix the DNS problem by specifying custom DNS as described in the
tutorial.
Use Google DNS, its GOOGLE, nothing weird or uncomfortable; 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4

Dont engage in selective troubleshooting, it doesnt work like that.

Reply

Stephanie says:
October 19, 2015 at 7:10 pm

Serge Waldo,
Thank you for the reply. For the past two days, Ive had no issues from my wifi.
And Im not using the new setup mentioned above but what I was using before.
Im not computer savvy, but can I be visiting a website thats eecting my wifi? I
dont understand why there are days where it will work and then days it wont. I
installed El Capitan as soon as it came out, so for a good two weeks, I had no
issues whatsoever. The next time I do have an issue, I will set the Google DNS as
mentioned above.
Thanks again for the reply
Reply

Marcos says:
October 18, 2015 at 6:06 am

What need to be fixed is the system as a whole!

Reply

desertman says:
October 18, 2015 at 8:15 am

At least for now this has fixed a months long problem that I had with my Wi-Fi connection.
Thanks a lot.
What you guys are doing is great!
Reply

Mujtaba says:
October 18, 2015 at 2:50 pm

Havent had problems so far. Thank god.

But wow reading some of these comments here have me worried!!! Early 2011 MBP
Reply

loothi says:
October 18, 2015 at 4:20 pm

I had a fresh install of El Capitan. Same problem. Created a standard user (based on a
discussion post at apple I read), swapped accounts, wifi login appears and works, then I
could go back to my admin account and the problem was solved.
Reply

nina says:
October 19, 2015 at 10:35 am

Ive been having printing troubleshoot after the El capitan upgrade. every time i try to print
documents it says done but doesnt print anything. Ive tried to print from (microsoft ,pages
,keynote) and it all ends up the same, i didnt have this issue only after upgrading my mac
about 2 weeks ago.
(Im using hp deskjet 1515 printer)
Ive tried everything recommended by apple support
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21726?locale=en_US

Reply

Amos says:
October 19, 2015 at 10:51 am

So your wi-fi works great then? Glad you got your printing issues resolved
Reply

nina says:
October 19, 2015 at 11:24 am

I didnt have any wifi problems since the upgrade, but i still have printing
troubleshoot + Im already late to hand my school projects so
Reply

Andre says:
October 19, 2015 at 4:12 pm

Is this helpful for AirDrop and Hando issues? Since I updated to El Capitan, AirDrop and
Hando no longer work. Ive tried connection with dierent iOS devices, but none of them
fins my Macbook Pro. I wonder if this could work.
Reply

Xavier says:
October 20, 2015 at 9:24 am

Thanks so much for the fix, that worked!

Reply

Sal says:
October 21, 2015 at 6:13 pm

My issue is a little dierent. I have decent speed during speed tests, but everything in Safari
is just painfully slow. Page loading, scrolling, commentingeverything. I tried clearing my
cache, restarting, toggling o and on WiFi.
Actually, everything since I upgraded to El Capitan is slow. iTunes, Safari, Notes, Photos.
Even loading from a reboot is painfully slow.
I was hoping todays update would have taken care of the issues. Instead, it seems to be
worse.
Reply

Alick says:
October 23, 2015 at 7:23 pm

Brilliant! Thanks for that, worked a treat! After upgrade to El Capitan, wifi was stopping very
ten minutes or so, with turning wifi on and o necessary to get it going again. Your fix,
fingers crossed, seems to have worked.
Reply

Sarah says:
October 24, 2015 at 11:52 am

I dont have the folder Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration on my macbookpro at all. I

can find Library/Preferences but the folder you mentioned isnt there.
My wifi has been slow and drops out all the time since I upgraded.
Is there something I should do about this?

Reply

jsan says:
October 24, 2015 at 12:21 pm

Youre in the wrong directory, Command + Shift + G, then go to

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
Do not go to ~/Library/Preferences The tilde matters, with it youre in the user
directory, without it youre in the root directory. You need to be in the root directory
Reply

Rago says:
October 24, 2015 at 10:51 pm

Thank you so much! It works!

Reply

Rajiv says:
October 25, 2015 at 9:48 am

After update to El capitan, I am not able to connect to wifi. But when i being both macbook
air and wifi router close at touching distance, wifi gets connected. Thia is strange. I tried
with many routers as well as mobile hotspot, but same issue. I have applied all the steps
mentioned in this article. I have got installed windows 8 also on same macbook and wifi is
easily connecting there. Please help
Reply

chriscoot66 says:
October 26, 2015 at 11:09 am

After the recent El Capitan update I noticed the wifi would not connect and even the
Network Name was greyed out so I could not select my network, I followed this fix and it
works great again, thank you so much
Reply

monkeyjoe says:
October 26, 2015 at 1:35 pm

Hey,
Seems like a good fix so far. Ive been having trouble connecting to my new Comcast
internet, and its been a very dicult problem to troubleshoot. Had the same issues in
Yosemite, so just tried updating to El Capitan because I heard they fixed some WiFi and
DNS glitches in the new operating system. The same problem persisted after the upgrade,
but the custom wifi configuration seems to have fixed the problem (at least for now, we will
see how long it holds up).
The weird thing is that I ONLY had issues on Comcasts High Speed internet. I also have my
old CenturyLink internet still set up and that seemed to work fine, as well as the internet at
my school. It was a weird problem too, very large websites like google would always load,
but then Id have trouble accessing smaller websites such as cnn.com, national geograpic,
university websites, etc. This problem persisted even if I connected directly to the router via
ethernet.
In Yosemite, I also had some luck getting the internet working by flushing the DNS cache
using this command line (although it wasnt working after I upgraded to El Capitan). It was a
inconsistent fix at best though, really more of a band aid if anything.
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache;sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Hopefully this keeps working. I dont really have all day to try and run a clean install of El
Capitan. Thanks again for the fix!
Reply

olebud says:
October 26, 2015 at 8:12 pm

Like Francis Copack.. I too am a Long time Mac user and I agree with everything he said.
Most of these posts are regarding folks upgrading.
But. imagine this.
A Windows user converts over to Apple. Buys a new Apple computer equipped with the
latest El Capitan System. gets it home and all hooked up and.. NO WI-FI !
Imagine the horror he/she faces having to try to go through all this BS just to MAYBE get
back what he/she already had in the first place.
Dam.. I miss Steve ! ! !
Reply

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