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WiFi icon is greyed out on my iMac after Catalina install.

WiFi icon is greyed out on my iMac after Catalina install.

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 26, 2020 10:27 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 26, 2020 10:51 PM

The easiest catch-all approach would be to restart in Safe Boot Mode (https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/start-up-your-mac-in-safe-mode-mh21245/mac), and see if it works there. If so, then just try rebooting normally.


If not, or if you can't get into Safe Boot, create a new network location profile (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480) from Safe Boot Mode or regular boot.


If that still doesn't work do an SMC reset (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295) and NVRAM reset (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063) and boot up normally afterwards and see if it's working now.


If it's still not working download the 10.15.7 Combo Update pack (https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2052) even if you are already running Catalina 10.15.7. (obviously this last one though would be hard unless you have an Ethernet connection you can use, or another Mac you can download the update with).


Note: You can do any/all of the above in any order, so if you can't try something skipping one won't affect if one of the others will resolve the issue. Typically running through all of these things though will get things working.


Generally the worst case is to have to boot up into Internet Recovery Mode (Option-Command-R) [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314] and select your Wi-Fi... get the spinning earth globe for 5-10 minutes, and if that at least that boots up properly you'll get into the "macOS Utilities" screen. From there,, select "Get Help Online" for a recovery mode browser and you can fully test your Wi-Fi that way to verify it's working at a hardware level (basically bypassing macOS altogether). You can even do an Internet Speed test (just for good measure) from dslreports.com or speedtest.net. If that all looks and works good via the recovery mode browser then close the browser window and choose to "reinstall macOS" from the main menu. This will do an over-top reinstall to refresh things without losing any data.

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 26, 2020 10:51 PM in response to tsankawe

The easiest catch-all approach would be to restart in Safe Boot Mode (https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/start-up-your-mac-in-safe-mode-mh21245/mac), and see if it works there. If so, then just try rebooting normally.


If not, or if you can't get into Safe Boot, create a new network location profile (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480) from Safe Boot Mode or regular boot.


If that still doesn't work do an SMC reset (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295) and NVRAM reset (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063) and boot up normally afterwards and see if it's working now.


If it's still not working download the 10.15.7 Combo Update pack (https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2052) even if you are already running Catalina 10.15.7. (obviously this last one though would be hard unless you have an Ethernet connection you can use, or another Mac you can download the update with).


Note: You can do any/all of the above in any order, so if you can't try something skipping one won't affect if one of the others will resolve the issue. Typically running through all of these things though will get things working.


Generally the worst case is to have to boot up into Internet Recovery Mode (Option-Command-R) [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314] and select your Wi-Fi... get the spinning earth globe for 5-10 minutes, and if that at least that boots up properly you'll get into the "macOS Utilities" screen. From there,, select "Get Help Online" for a recovery mode browser and you can fully test your Wi-Fi that way to verify it's working at a hardware level (basically bypassing macOS altogether). You can even do an Internet Speed test (just for good measure) from dslreports.com or speedtest.net. If that all looks and works good via the recovery mode browser then close the browser window and choose to "reinstall macOS" from the main menu. This will do an over-top reinstall to refresh things without losing any data.

WiFi icon is greyed out on my iMac after Catalina install.

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