Adjusting Network Settings on OSX via terminal


Here are a some quick commands to manage and change your network settings in OSX.

  • Turning Wi-Fi on or off
    With the following options, you can get the power status of the current Wi-Fi card and change it if needed:
    networksetup -getairportpower <device name>
    networksetup -setairportpower <device name> <on off>
  • Setting the AirPort network
    With these options you can change the network AirPort uses (see below for how to scan for Wi-Fi networks via the command line):
    networksetup -getairportnetwork <device name>
    networksetup -setairportnetwork <device name> <network> [password]
  • Managing preferred wireless networks
    These options can be used to list your preferred Wi-Fi networks, add or remove networks to the list, or clear the entire list:
    networksetup -listpreferredwirelessnetworks <device name>
    networksetup -addpreferredwirelessnetworkatindex <device name> <network> <index> <security type> [password]
    networksetup -removepreferredwirelessnetwork <device name> <network>
    networksetup -removeallpreferredwirelessnetworks <device name>

    Along with the airport command which can also be used to scan for wifi networks.

  • Airport

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport

With the airport command you can change channels, disconnect from any Wi-Fi network, and get information on the current connection, but more importantly, you can scan for available Wi-Fi networks. If you don’t want to go digging for this buried command every time, you can make an alias for it, create a link to it, or copy it from its location to a more convenient place, such as the /usr/bin/ directory. Here, though, we will change to the command’s parent directory and run it from there by using the following:

cd /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/

Once at this directory, you can run various options in the command line to look up information and make changes to the Wi-Fi connection:

  1. Change channel
    ./airport -c CHANNEL
  2. Disconnect
    ./airport -z
  3. Get current connection info
    ./airport -I
  4. Scan for Wi-Fi networks
    ./airport -s

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