How to better sort and set wifi network preferences on Mac

Networkpreferencessystem-prefswifi

The Advanced section of the Wifi – Network Preferences allows for dragging and dropping of known wifi networks in order to set a priority order for joining networks. (Networks higher in the list will be joined first, when multiple are available.)

Advanced Wifi Network Preferences

By default, newly joined networks are added to the end of the list. My problem is that I have hundreds of known networks and the list cannot be searched, nor can the window be made larger to allow for more effective scrolling.

I was wondering if there exists a better method, or perhaps a third-party app, that would give a better UI to search and re-sort known wifi networks. Let me know if this question would be better suited for Software Recs SE.

Best Answer

TL;DR;

The file that contains all the information about Known Networks is com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and you can find it under /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

How to change the order / Delete a network from the order:

  1. Open finder.
  2. From Menu Bar select Go -> Go To Folder.
  3. Copy paste this path /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/.
  4. Locate the file com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and make a copy of it with a name like com.apple.airport.preferencesOLD.plist ( for backup just in case).
  5. Move the original file from the previous step to your desktop to enable editing.
  6. Open the file with Xcode (or any other text editor app)
  7. In PreferredOrder array you can see the full list in descending sort.
  8. Change the order or delete a network if you don't want it in the order.
  9. Move the com.apple.airport.preferences.plist back to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ folder

As you can see the value of each item is wifi's ssid.

You can match wifi ssid with yours wifi name from the dictionary KnownNetworks (above of PreferredOrder in com.apple.airport.preferences.plist file).

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