network locations on Mac Os Ventura

One of the more baffling decisions in Ventura was to remove the ability to change network locations in the new System Settings app. I was somewhat worried by this when I first noticed it as I depend on this feature to reconfigure my Mac's ethernet adapter between work and home. Without it the process of manually changing every setting would be extremely time consuming and error-prone. The good news is that the network locations feature is still present and functional.

If you already have 2 or more locations configured on you Mac before upgrading to Ventura then there will be a "Location" submenu under the apple menu in the top-left of your Mac's screen. You can switch between locations using that menu. The System Settings app will show the network settings for the current location and you can edit a location's settings as normal. However, if you only have the original "Automatic" location configured then the "Location" menu will be absent.

The bad news is that there is no longer a way to add (or remove) locations via the Ventura GUI. But it is still possible, via the command line (Terminal). The command concerned is "networksetup" and these are the relevant options for locations:

Usage: networksetup -getcurrentlocation
    Display the name of the current location.
    
Usage: networksetup -listlocations
    List all of the locations.
    
Usage: networksetup -createlocation <location name> [populate]
    Create a new network location with the spcified name.
    If the optional term "populate" is included, the location will be populated with the
    default services.
    
Usage: networksetup -deletelocation <location name>
    Delete the location.
    
Usage: networksetup -switchtolocation <location name>
    Make the specified location the current location.

So to add a location "Test" and populate it with the default network services for your machine, you would use the following command:

networksetup -createlocation Test populate

You'd then be able to switch to the "Test" location using the apple menu and configure it in System Settings. Hope that helps.

Just following up to this post in case it helps anybody else who was struggling with this issue. It seems Apple agrees with us and has fully restored the Network Locations feature in the user interface in the recent macOS 13.1 update.

Open System Preferences, then select Network. The "..." button at the bottom of the settings page now contains an additional "Locations" submenu, which allows you to select the location to use from a list and also to "Edit Locations...". It's what was there before, basically.

I thought having a macbook pro where you have to log in with the backlit keyboard off, was the stupidest thing you could do ... I was wrong ... Steve we miss you!

And that they do not mention this before the upgrade makes it a big surprise. I really use the location switcher a lot in trouble shooting networking. Terminal is oké but a GUI is necessary.