MacBook Pro M1 WiFi issue

Please let us know the solution to this. I have 2 M1 MacBook Airs in the house and both are having the same issue.

I bought them last year for myself and my wife.

My other older Apple laptops/devices/iMacs have a a very stable wifi connectivity except for the M1 MacBook Air.

So its not our router or anything outside of the M1 MacBook Air.

My wife relies on her old windows laptop just to have a continuous and stable Internet browsing experience.

The MacBook Air is useless to us without Internet connectivity.

I can't believe that M1-based MacBook Air has a network connectivity drops issue and I thought I'm the only one experiencing it.

I am facing the same issue. Speedtest shows great speed but communication over wireless connection is not stable on zoom since I bought mac book pro M1. It's also unable to find wifi a number of times though all other devices find it just fine. In a 2015 macbook pro it was alright. What is the resolution?

There is an acknowledged problem with Wi-Fi using the 5GHz band on M1 Macs. It appears that the software does not deal well with a split high band 80 GHz channel. When loading gets heavy, it stops working properly.

One User reported that changing the Router settings to 40 MHz channel on 5GHz solved their problem.

Normally, I would recommend that you get an Ethernet adapter. But at the moment, all the aftermarket ones are using an RTL chip that has a different problem, but similar symptoms -- stops working under heavy loads. We think the belkin adapter sold in the Mac store works, but this has not been confirmed.

Both of these issues should be fixed in updates coming soon.

Nice to finally see someone say there is in fact an issue. Would you mind sharing where Apple has acknowledged the problem? I called support yesterday and they were clueless.

I have many Apple devices in my home and 3 are M1 based products (MBA, IPad Pro and a Mac Mini) and all M1 devices do the same thing meaning WiFi randomly stops working multiple times a day. The Mac Mini was so bad I had to run an Ethernet cable across the room to connect to it so my Time machine backups would run without failing due to the WiFi constantly dropping.

I should also add that I’ve tried all the recommended fixes (reset network settings, reset router, etc.) and the problem always returns. Only thing I can do is turn WiFi off and then on again which fixes it until it drops again.

They need to fix this ASAP. Crazy it’s taking so long.

Readers often call support and ask "is this a known problem".

To answer that question, the person answering your call must understand what you are talking about (not always so easy, based on User's sketchy symptoms) and that person must literally have seen this issue before. Otherwise, it is impossible to "connect the dots" in any meaningful way.

Luckily, you are clever enough to post here as well, where a multitude of Users, some with deep understanding in some very narrow areas, volunteer to help other Users.

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The way to get relief for now, until a fix is available, it to reduce the channel-width on 5GHz band on your Router back to 40 MHz channel. The Wi-Fi 6 80 MHz and wider channels seems to be the source of the issue. (it is supposed to be backward-compatible, but it looks like they missed the mark).

The shortcoming will be that your fastest best connection will be limited to 802.11n Wi-Fi 5 450M bits/sec for now.

I've had the same problem with my new m1 mac pro 13. disconnects all the time and my other computers do not disconnect. so its clearly and issue with this new m1., let me know if you have any solutions. i'm sure apple is getting a lot of complains on this.

I Bought my M1 Mac in April and for 2 months i was also face this issue and the moment my computer goes to sleep after that m1 mac didn't connect with WIFI, now all of the sudden this is resolved, i don't know where was the problem and how it is resolved, its quite stable, my VPN was erradic because of unstable WIFI, now VPN is working fine.

I am still not able to understand how this got resolved, but yes as compare to my last macbook pro 2014 which was solid stable. i don't remember when i restarted last, but m1 I restart every 3 days, than only i can able to stabilise my WIFI, other wise my applications also get hangs. I think no proper solution.

Same issue.

Bought my M1 iMac 3 weeks ago and I have the same issue on going issue.

Wish I knew this before spending so much hard earned money on such a disappointing product, which I also can not return anymore.

It's the latest Xfi Gateway 3rd Generation Model: CGM4331COM, hardware revision V2. Pretty sure this isn't a wifi router issue. My other non M1 Macs and PC's in the home work fine on 5Ghz 80Mhz Channel Bandwidth. It's just these M1 devices that have the issue.

I did not suggest this is a Router issue. I wanted to see if there was a way to set your 5GHz channel-width to 40 instead of 80, which users report as a good work-around.

This is not a "fix". It ought to work at 80, but 80 is unique in this band in that it often splits the bandwidth into two parts, which is the likely source of the problems.

I also wanted to suggest you do the software update to 11.5, in the remote chance the problem is fixed in that version.

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The online manual I found (by searching for the model number) says you can make more changes by skipping the iPhone App and connecting with a Web Browser, entering the Router IP address in the search bar, typically 192.168.0.1 Then choose Advanced administration.

But it does not say whether you can change the channel width from the initial setting of 80.

I upgraded the Mac's to 11.5 a few days ago and no change. I've logged into the router Admin and tried to change the Channel Bandwidth setting but most settings including that are grayed out. I've tried 3 different times (2 chat sessions and 1 phone call) with Xfinity support to get them to tell me how to make it so the router will let me make changes.

Nothing they've had me do will let me change the 5Ghz router settings. I'm beginning to think I need to go buy my own router, put the Xfinity router in Bridge mode and then test these devices on the lower Channel Bandwidth settings. I'm spending way too much time troubleshooting Apple M1 wifi issues.

If you have a good strong signal, the traditional work-around was to give the 5GHz and The 2.4GHz different names, so that you could selectively connect to one or the other using different network-names. (they remain the same network).

Another alternative was to use an Ethernet adapter, but up to at least11.4, these have a different problem, where they fall apart under heavy load. Users report the sold-in-the-Apple-store model does no better than the others. No word on whether 11.5 provides any fixes for this one.

<< That's why I'm curious if any else is having the same issue and has a router where they can make that change does their problem go away. >>

Yes, another reader reported that changing to 40 MHz channel solved all their problems. That's not speculation --there is some (admittedly thin, but some) data behind it.

If the "network-name" separately changeable for either the 2.4GHz or the 5GHz portion of the network?

If it is, you could name it slightly different name from 2.4GHz and selectively connect the M1 Mac to the 2.4GHz radio, skirting the problem without spending more money.