Ubuntu – How to make the network manager automatically connect to a new network

Hm... not sure why NeworkManager behave this way. This should only happen if you have already added the wireless network in the list and Connect automatically is checked.... maybe is from a connection configured by another users and made available to all users.

You can try to manually add the wireless network and the uncheck Connect automatically.

The solution suggested by con-f-use should work but doesn't, due to a long-standing bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/280571

There are workarounds though. For recent NetworkManager versions, there is a commandline utitility, nmcli, that can be edited and saved as something like /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/vpn-up:

#! /bin/bash

REQUIRED_CONNECTION_NAME="<name-of-connection>"
VPN_CONNECTION_NAME="<name-of-vpn-connection>"


activ_con=$(nmcli con status | grep "${REQUIRED_CONNECTION_NAME}")
activ_vpn=$(nmcli con status | grep "${VPN_CONNECTION_NAME}")
if [ "${activ_con}" -a ! "${activ_vpn}" ];
then
    nmcli con up id "${VPN_CONNECTION_NAME}"
fi

[I haven't tested this -- please feel free to test and edit according to results]

See: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NetworkManager#Use_dispatcher_to_connect_to_a_vpn_after_a_network-connection_is_established has more info.