Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at the Wi-Fi settings in macOS Ventura.
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Now of course macOS Ventura completely overhauled System Preferences. It is now System Settings.
One of the areas where I think there's been some great improvement is in Wi-Fi Settings. Let's take
a look. So if I go into System Settings here I can see that Wi-Fi Settings are right here
at the top. They're their own category. You can still go to the Network and then see all of your
different network options and then go to Wi-Fi. But you could also just go straight to Wi-Fi.
It takes you to the same place. You could also access your Wi-Fi Settings just as before either
in Control Center, under Wi-Fi like on the little reveal button there and you get more information,
or you can just go into the Wi-Fi Status Menu right there. If you don't have it there,
I'll drag mine out, you can simply go into Control Center and then Drag Wi-Fi
up into the Status Menu there and then you can click on it and you get access
to the On/Off switch for Wi-Fi. You can switch networks and you can go to Wi-Fi
Settings in yet another way to get to the same location. So let's look at these settings here.
Everything is now in a list. At the top you've got your ON/Off switch and you can
see the network you're currently connected to. You also see the little padlock there
if the network is secure. Of course you should definitely see that on any network
that you want to use and you should see it on just about any other network today.
You'll see the signal strength there as well. Remember with Wi-Fi the signal strength is just
the strength of the signal from your Mac to the Wi-Fi Router. It has nothing to do with how fast
or the quality of your actual internet connection. That's between the Router and the internet itself.
Now you can dig further into the details with the Details Button. This gives you access to
all the information that we could see before back in System Preferences. So under the top
category you're going to see some of the Main Settings that most people need to deal with.
You've got Automatically Join this Network. If this is your home network or one you use
regularly like one at work, then of course you should have this checked and your Mac
would automatically join this network when it is available. You also have a new Low
Data Mode option. So what does low data mode do? So Apple actually has a page on this though the
haven't updated it to include the Mac yet. So here you can see exactly what to expect
when using Low Data Mode over Wi-Fi. The variety of different things that happen. For instance,
the quality of streaming content might be reduced. iCloud Photos pauses updates. Articles perfecting
and news is turned On. Even a slower video bit rate for FaceTime. So you can checkout this page
if you want to know the details. But normally you wouldn't want this turned on for your home network
or at work. But perhaps if you're using a network that has limited bandwidth. Lots of places around
the world still have a bandwidth limit for even home users so you may want to have that turned On
in some cases but not for others. This allows you to customize this on a per network basis.
Now there's also the option here for Limit IP Address Tracking. This is also known as
Private Relay and it's a feature of an iCloud Plus subscription. So what this switch does
is this allows you to specify this on a per network basis. Here you'll also see your IP
Address and your Router's IP Address which is really handy. In the past we could always see
our local IP address. That's just the address for our computer on our local local network.
It's not typically what you would be looking for when you want to know your IP Address.
Your IP Address is the one your Router is using to connect to the rest of the
internet. In certain security situations, maybe you want to log onto a special server and they
need to know your internet IP Address, it's the Router IP Address that you would want.
Now the rest of this here allows you to setup all of the details. Most people don't need to
deal with this. But if you do need to go in and say change your DNS you can go and do it here.
Now underneath your current network you've got Personal Hotspots. So in this case it sees my
iPhone 13 Pro and I can connect to that if I want. Then under that is Known Networks. Now
these aren't all of the known networks. But just the networks that it can see right now.
You'll see a checkmark next to the one you're currently connected to. But you'll also see
other ones listed that you're not connected to and you'll have the Connect button so you can
switch to that network. You'll also have a More Information button here to the right of each one
of these. So you can click on this, and this is where you can change the Auto Join Setting for
this network. Now you can see one of the options here is to Copy Password. This is really handy
because if you forget the password to a network you can Copy it and now you can Paste it into a
document or maybe a text message or something like that. So if a friend comes over to visit
and you want to give him the Wi-Fi password you can Copy it like that and share it with them.
You can get to Network Settings for this network even though you're not connected
to it. This is where I can delete this network and its password and I won't have
that anymore under Known Networks. It would now be under Other Networks. Other Networks
lists all the other networks that your Mac can currently see so they are nearby but
you either don't have their password to them or you've never connected to these networks.
Now you may ask well what about my known networks, the ones I've used before, that don't happen to be
nearby. How can I get to those? After all some of us like to go in and delete them. Say you stayed
at a hotel for a few days. You get home and you decide you want to go in and delete that network
from your list. It won't be shown here because you are nowhere near that Wi-Fi network anymore.
Well that can be found here at the bottom. There's an Advanced Button here. Click that
and then that has a list of all of your known networks. You can use the same information button
over here to switch On and Off Auto Join. You could also Copy the password from these
networks as well and then Paste it somewhere if you want to see it or Paste it into a
text message to send to somebody else. Like if somebody is staying at your house while you're
away and they want to know the password and you can't remember what it is. You could get it this
way. And you can Remove from the list. If you are wondering if you can bulk remove from the list,
you certainly can. You can select one and then Command Click to select the second or
select one and Shift Click to select a range. Click on any of these and say Remove From List
and you'll see it allows you to remove all of the networks that are selected.
You also have some other settings up here. This is an Administrator Account. I could
set whether or not authorization is needed to change networks or turn Wi-Fi On or Off. So you
can use that to prevent somebody else on say a standard account from switching Off Wi-Fi or
switching to another network. There is Show Legacy networks and Options will show older
Wi-Fi networks that may not be supported. But also from what I've read it will show
an option that doesn't seem to be here anymore. That's to create your own Wi-Fi network on your
Mac. This is typically done if you have an ethernet connection to the internet and you
want to take your Mac and turn it into a Wi-Fi Hotspot for other devices to join. That's not
normally here but if you switch this On that's one of those Legacy Options that can be used.
Now back here above the Advanced button there are two other options here we should look at.
One is Ask To Join Networks. So on the Mac you just have a simple switch On or Off. There is
no option anymore for simply automatically joining some network you've never heard of
before. It won't do that. Either it is not going to ask to join other networks at all,
you have to go in here and actually select a new network or if you turn it On and it
can't find one of your networks it will ask you if it's okay to join one that it
finds. But neither of those will make you automatically join in an unsafe network.
You have a separate switch here for the same thing but for joining iPhone Personal Hotspots.
Now one of the things that is missing here is the ability to set the prescidence for
the networks. So if I wanted to change the order at which it prefers to join networks
I can't do it. So it seems like it has just got to be random or it is just the order in
which you joined. But in fact its not. It's is actually very specific. It's not just something
you control manually. Apple actually has a detailed page about it right here. What it
is doing is creating behind the scenes point system. So first it is going to look at your
known networks and score them based on your past actions. The biggest one being if you manually
switch to a network. So if you decide to pick a network it is going to give that network some
points and it is going to increase its score. So if it keeps picking the wrong network you
manually switch to the one you want, sooner or later, probably within just a few tries,
it will get that you want one network over the other and pick that one itself.
I want to end with one tip here. Just like before if you have Wi-Fi here in
the Menu Bar you could also hold the Option key down and click it and you
get so much more. You can create diagnostic reports, open wireless diagnostics here,
and you can get lots of information about your local Wi-Fi network including lots of status
and signal strength information as well. So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.