Change the order of the network ports my Mac uses

Are you running from an account with admin privileges? (if you are the sole user and have only one account, then you are the administrator)

Try restarting in Safe Mode and making that change while in Safe Mode. Does that work?

Is this device managed by chance?

You can try in terminal with the networksetup command.

example of the command syntax.

networksetup -ordernetworkservices "Wi-Fi" "Ethernet" "Bluetooth PAN" "something here"

You need to list every network service and the order you want them in or it will error out. Make sure to quote if there is a space in the network service name.

Just to make sure: you are selecting Wifi, then clicking Advanced, dragging to change the order of the known Wifi networks, and they are reverting back to the old state?

If that is the case, then you may want to try to “forget” the networks you don’t want to take precedence.

Only if you are on a MacBook family member with an active Wi-Fi will you have System Preferences > Network Preferences > Advanced > Wi-Fi Preferred networks panel. You can drag the Wi-Fi SSID name to the order you want those services connected and when you next connect, the top entry will be the default SSID connected too if it is available. Then click Apply. You can also moderate this by setting up different locations for those Wi-Fi services if in different locale.

Actually, now that I'm using Ventura, all of my saved WiFi networks are in alphabetical order and there doesn't seem to be an option to manually move them as in previous versions of the OS. The problem is that my MacBook Pro is joining a slower network than I would like but I don't want to forget the slow network because I sometimes need to connect to it. Any backdoor option to change the order of networks?

keithfrommarietta wrote:

Actually, now that I'm using Ventura, all of my saved WiFi networks are in alphabetical order ...

Be advised you are replying to someone else's Discussion, which will only confuse those trying to help.

Are you asking about the network service order or your list of preferred wireless networks?

Because...

Brent Emerson wrote:

Following the instructions in the article, "Change the order of the network ports your Mac uses" ...

That would be Change the order of the network ports your Mac uses - Apple Support — an altogether different subject, unless I am misunderstanding his question.

This may be a battle with Wi-Fi order that you do not win…

Are you trying to prioritize a specific wireless network (SSID), or a Network Service (ie Ethernet vs Wi-Fi)?