Until the recent update network locations could easily be administered at the system preferences. Now this option is gone with Ventura.
How do I administer Network locations with MacOS Ventura.
Thanks for the help.
MacBook Pro Apple Silicon
It's difficult to fathom why this change was made in Ventura. It certainly makes life much harder for those of us that rely on the feature, and I doubt anybody who doesn't would find the network settings any easier to understand.
The good news is that the feature still works as before, and if you have any locations other than the default "Automatic" location then there will be the usual "Location" submenu in the apple menu at the top-left of the screen. You can quickly switch locations using that, and then configure the current location's settings using the System Settings app.
What you can't do via the GUI any more is administer locations, as you rightly describe. To do so you have to resort to the command line, specifically the "networksetup" command.
The location-related options for the networksetup command are as follows:
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 if you wanted to, for example, create a new location "Test" and populate it with the default services for your machine, you would enter the following in Terminal:
networksetup -createlocation Test populate
Once you have added a custom location the "Locations" submenu will appear in the apple menu (and will be absent otherwise). Hope this helps.
It's difficult to fathom why this change was made in Ventura. It certainly makes life much harder for those of us that rely on the feature, and I doubt anybody who doesn't would find the network settings any easier to understand.
The good news is that the feature still works as before, and if you have any locations other than the default "Automatic" location then there will be the usual "Location" submenu in the apple menu at the top-left of the screen. You can quickly switch locations using that, and then configure the current location's settings using the System Settings app.
What you can't do via the GUI any more is administer locations, as you rightly describe. To do so you have to resort to the command line, specifically the "networksetup" command.
The location-related options for the networksetup command are as follows:
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 if you wanted to, for example, create a new location "Test" and populate it with the default services for your machine, you would enter the following in Terminal:
networksetup -createlocation Test populate
Once you have added a custom location the "Locations" submenu will appear in the apple menu (and will be absent otherwise). Hope this helps.
How do I administer an location I newly build by the terminal command?
Use the Location menu to select the new location, then use the System Settings app to set up your WiFi as required.
How do I delete an old location when its name is more than one word long?
Place quotation marks around the name, for example:
networksetup -deletelocation "Test Location"
(This is true for any of the commands when you want a space in the name).
If you were having problems with a newly created location when it had a space in the name that you didn't surround with quotation marks then there's a good possibility the populate option didn't work. If you don't specify the populate option then the WiFi service won't be added to the new location. An example add command for a name with a space would be:
networksetup -createlocation "Test Location" populate
Thanks for your answer.
Unfortunately I cannot activate WiFi when changing the location via the apple menu.
How do I administer an location I newly build by the terminal command?
How do I delete an old location when its name is more than one word long?
Thanks for your help.
Network location with Mac OS Ventura
