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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.
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.
Also for me deleting a couple of files in these folders made the trick. I realized actually there was a lot coming from non-used apps anymore (including cisco any connect). Thanks for the tip.
Connect to wifi network, then fire up terminal and sudo the following command:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Captive\ Network\ Assistant.app/Contents/MacOS/Captive\ Network\ Assistant ; exit;
Voila.
It works if you delete every thing in the following 2 folders: /Library/LaunchDaemons and /Library/LaunchAgents
Turn off wifi. Restart computer. Turn on wifi. It should work.
I did that in the end.
And then I thought, why not just put it in the Dock?
Thanks, deleting all files in LaunchDaemons and LaunchAgents for Tunnelblick did the trick for me. Restarted and voila.
This is the solution that worked for me, as well.
Hi there,
For me when after removing 'Zoom' from my Login Items in Sys Prefs, the portal worked straight away again on public WiFi.
Using Mac OS Catalina, 10.15.1
Anyone have a chance yet to try 10.15.2 and see if it has fixed the problem?
Yes! I just tried and mine is fixed! woohoo finally! with 10.15.2
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
wifi not working - captive portal login screen does not appear
