Activate Mac -- no WiFi menu to select network

I just had a similar situation with my MacBook Pro. It started on a black screen that said Activate Mac across the top and "Recovery Assistant" in the menu bar. It was asking me to connect to the Internet with either WiFi or Ethernet. But there was no wifi menu available nor a wifi symbol near the upper top right corner of the screen, only an A icon and a battery icon.

After digging through a handful of almost-helpful articles online, I found one that did the trick. It said to hold down the physical power button on the Mac until it powered off. Wait 30-seconds, then power it back on.

As I did so, there were a couple of odd schematics that showed up during the reboot (one looked like a mouse from the bottom, the other looked like a menu bar in miniature)… but eventually, I ended up at the Activate Mac screen again AND the wifi icon was in the upper right corner of the screen. That allowed me to manually enter my network name and password under the "Join Other Network" option.

I hope this helps…

Ron

It is May 24th, 2022 and the same issue just happened to me. I hard reset my mac to factory settings and was stuck on the "activate mac" page with no wifi menu bar popping up and no wifi symbol in the top right corner. Luckily the apple support man I spoke to walked me through this problem after an hour of solutions. If you are stuck on the activate mac page with no wifi bar in top right corner: You first hold down the power button until it turns off, Keep holding it do not let go until words pop up on the screen it will say something like "loading start up menu" keep holding the power button still until the gear icon (system button) pops up, click on that, I think if I remember correctly it then says continue, just follow the next steps then the wifi symbol will eventually appear in top right corner. Connect to wifi and you will have to download the update again back onto ur mac, mine was MacOs Montery. I selected that and it took about an hour for it to download on my computer.

DanJackMan: Very Top right. The Wi-Fi icon is grayed out. Very hard to see.

Best answer.

So simple. Crazy bad UI 😆

Turn off mac and run in safe mode, wifi icon should appear. Worked like a charm, wifi logo appeared.

How to use safe mode on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

Actually, if you have a second Mac, you can share the internet with the other one you would like to restore, to do that.

1. Turn on your MacBook as usual, until you see the screen that requests you to connect to a Wi-Fi
2. Connect your MacBook with another Mac by USB-C cable.
3. In the second Mac, go to System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing.
4. At the "Share your connection from" box, select "Wi-Fi"
5. On the "To computers using" list, check "Thunderbolt Bridge" and check your MacBook if it appears on the list.
6. Finally, check the check box at the left of the "Internet Sharing" option in the "Service" list at the left of the screen, it will display another window and you just need to activate it.

If the sharing internet is enabled correctly, it will take some seconds for your MacBook to detect the internet connection and start the recovery.

I did these steps using a Mac mini M1 as recovery and a MacBook Pro (Intel) as a secondary Mac and worked pretty well.

Power off your mac. Then turn on and go to boot options (Hold power button until "loading startup options" appears) Then click options. Wait for it to boot, and the wifi menu will be there. Activate your mac from the recovery os, then reboot and activation will work.

On the activation lock/unlock screen.

It tells you to select a net work, but there is no obvious Netwerk menu.

Well I finally found if you look in the top right corner of the menu between the battery symbol and the input menu there is the grayed out menu for the Wi-Fi connections. You would never see them unless you were specifically looking up there but there they are and you can scroll down and pick the one you need from the networks that are available. Hope this helps someone.

I had the same issue on my Macbook Air M1. What eventually worked for me was pressing down on the power button until it turned off. Then hold down the power button until it turned on. Then a screen comes up with SETTINGS on it. Clicking on settings took me to the same Recovery page, but the wifi option had appeared on the top right.

So this actually helped (mind you I tried everything except buying an Ethernet to USB-C adapter) and came upon this solution on my own. So instead of just powering off and powering back on, when powering back on I held the button on until the screen showed something like “continue holding for startup options”. I kept holding, selected options, and VOILA!! The wifi symbol FINALLY appeared on the upper right hand corner! Don’t know why restarting, deleting content, etc didn’t work but this did! Now in the process of building my preferences again. Hope this helps others!!

I've resolved this issue on Apple Silicon MacBook running macOS 13.0 by shutting computer down and starting up holding power button. Then clicked on Options and get Activate Mac screen with WiFi menu back in the menubar!

Didn't want to waste time Erasing Mac and reinstalling OS.

Hello, tried different aproaches. None worked. However, I used a combination of SMC (shutdown + long press Power button) and the Command + R.

Basically, I shut the device down. Then powered it on by pressing + holding the power button until the "Loading config... " text appeared on-screen. Immediately after that, I pressed and held the Command + R keys while it was loading. Only after this sequece the WiFi icon appeared.

Then I cried a little bit, relieved.

But all is fine now. Hope this helps.

If you see no Wi-Fi, click the Apple logo and shut down the Mac. Once that’s done, press and hold your Touch ID/Power button, until you see “Loading startup options…” if your Mac is erased, there should only be a Options icon with a System Settings look. Boot into it and follow the instructions. At this point, you should see the Wi-Fi as the last option on the top-right.

This will work, shutdown and then touch/press the power button for a sec to turn it on and then right away hold down the power button till the recovery screen shows up, proceed with language choice etc and in a few secs you will see wifi icon will show up

I experienced the same problem with my MacBook M1. I tried all the recommendations provided, but to no avail. However, I discovered a fix. First, power off your MacBook. Then, quickly tap the power button once and release it. Immediately after, press and hold the power button until the Options menu shows up. From there, proceed by selecting your language. After that, you should see the WiFi icon.

called Apple support and it turns out the WIFI icon was in the top right corner but blacked out. Machine was in a bright space so I couldn’t see the icon. It worked when I clicked on it.