On upgrade to Catalina, the captive portal wifi login page no longer appears. Because of this I can no longer connect to public wifi portals.
Steps: Connect to a public wifi
Expected result: Captive network login dialog screen should appear
Actual result: Wifi shows as connected, but no login screen, and no internet access, no DNS resolution, not able to access any IPs on the network
MacBook Pro
This is a bug in macOS Catalina (still present with the latest patchlevel, i.e. 10.15 with the supplemental update from 15th October 2019). For some reason the Captive Portal Assistant (the app that produces the captive portal popup window whenever you connect to a WiFi hotspot) won't start automatically.
There are two workarounds:
option 1: Either you can manually start the Captive Portal Assistant app manually after you have connected to the WiFi network. This will bring up the captive portal popup window and you can unlock Internet access there. (Really no need to boot in recovery mode, etc. !)
option 2: From this blog post: To bring back the captive portal window automatically whenever you connect to a captive portal-protected WiFi network you can create a LaunchDaemon that watches for WiFi changes and automatically opens the Captive Portal Assistant app.
Create a plist file with the service definition somewhere:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" \
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>my.shim.catalina.captivenetworkassistant.plist</string>
<key>LowPriorityIO</key>
<true/>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>open</string>
<string>/System/Library/CoreServices/Captive Network Assistant.app</string>
</array>
<key>WatchPaths</key>
<array>
<string>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
and apply it:
launchctl load my.shim.catalina.captivenetworkassistant.plist
launchctl start my.shim.catalina.captivenetworkassistant
check https://poweruser.blog/macos-catalina-wifi-issue-captive-portal-broken-45610cc016b5 for more details.
Is it ok to delete everything?
After trying it all, this one solved it for me. Thanks!
Same!!!! And getting really sick and tired of this from Apple and mac os! This is never a problem on Windows so not sure why this happens on mac os
So far, this one works for me! Thx alot.
After trying all the other solutions, this one worked perfectly for me (/System/Library/CoreServices/Captive Network Assistant....) ! Thank you.
I did that in the end.
And then I thought, why not just put it in the Dock?
This is the solution that worked for me, as well.
Anyone have a chance yet to try 10.15.2 and see if it has fixed the problem?
How to remove it? Please answer. I am newbie on macbook.
Thanks for the information - it sorted the connectivity out, and I'm back on-line rather than using the iPhone hotspot
I just tried the above suggestion. I rebooted my Macbook in Safe Mode, and the Delta wifi box popped right up. I logged into the wife, then rebooted my machine in normal mode, and the wifi connection is still working. So this has been a temporary fix that is letting me use the wifi on my current flight.
I too have this issue !!! After updating to catalina, I am unable to login to my institution wifi. I tried rebooting to safe mode and then the captive portal was open and I could login to college wifi. But as soon as I am back in the normal mode, I am unable to connect to my institution wifi, which makes me crazy... Any helps are most welcome....
I'm having the same problem on a brand new Macbook Pro I bought last week. Took it to Genius Bar and they couldn't figure it out - said it is likely an "emerging issue" that will get fixed. Their best suggestion was to roll back to Mojave until they release a fix.
Hey I had the same issues!
In my macbook pro 13" 2015 i had just reboot the device and login again and the captive portal magically apperead. It doesn't seem any problem of my app but some "com.apple.services" that doesn't work properly.
For whose that saying that in Windows everything works fine, just google "windows 10 captive portal doesn't appear" and you found out that is a common problem of macOS, Windows, Android, iOS and especially Linux users. Captive portal is probably a smart solution but it is developed not very well in every environment.
One thing I discovered when clearing out the Launch Agents is a number of apps that I no longer use and are not even on my computer. I wonder if any of those were interfering with the Captive Portal popup? But only when coming out of sleep, not from a fresh startup.
wifi not working - captive portal login screen does not appear
