Mac Mini M2 wifi issues

Greetings Vanny,

interesting theory.

When did you start turning off WiFi 6E mode? Is your WiFi connection stable since then?

Kind regards

Dominik

K2Kevin Siad:

"Mac Mini M2 wifi issues: Are you on Comcast or using the Xfinity Xfi wifi modem/router. I noticed I lost all wifi late last night to all machines. This morning this Mac mini wifi issue seems to be resolved for now (While on phone with Apple reporting the issue)”

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I am Leasing my Router from Xfinity:

Maybe there was a weak signal —one too weak for the signal. Could be due to the weather, depending what it’s like where the ISP is located.

I lost power two or three times yesterday due to a power surge or sag, and my modem restarted by itself.

I am leasing the modem from the ISP. So, contact them if your are leasing it. If it dies, then it would be on the ISP(if circumstances are met).

I had (past tense!) the same problems described by others here, on my brand new Mac Mini M2 Pro which I installed as a clean brand new machine, not transferring anything from my other Macs or backups. The WiFi reception was extremely bad. I tested it with three different routers and all sorts of combinations of settings, standards and channels. I live in an area with a lot of WiFi networks and my brand new Mac could at the best of times see only 4 of them, not even all of my own. At the same time my old Mac Mini (late 2012) as well as my iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, three Windows PCs, heck even the dishwasher! could see the whole jungle without problems. On my Gigabit internet connection I scarcely reached 10 Mbps downloads on the only connection that the Mac Mini was able to establish (2.4 GHz band on one of the routers). I have read carefully though this thread and quite a few others, tried all that was suggested there plus a lot of other different approaches (I am somewhat of a networking expert), all to no avail.

At the same time, probably because of the WiFi malfunction, I could not see my iPad and iPhone in the Finder without connecting them with cable, nor could I benefit from the Continuity function on the iPhone to use it as camera/mic in FaceTime.

Then, after the nth reboot of the new Mac suddenly all fell into place and started functioning as expected, without me having changed any of the default settings. I can still not see all the many neighboring networks that I do see on other machines, but at least I can see all of mine and I have a decent WiFi connection speed.

So, maybe it's like in so many Hollywood comedies - turn it off and on again (many times) :-)

Come to think of it, multiple restaurants may have fixed that issues for me as well. I thought splitting the bands fixed the issue. But after posting on this thread I was contacted directly by Apple and after a lengthy conversation about what I did, what router I have and it’s firmware version, etc, he wanted me to recreate the issue. So I combined the 5GHz and 6GHz bands to a single SSID name (wifi name). The issue never came back, and it is working perfectly (knock on wood).

Also having this issue. Multiple computers in this room connect to my mesh router without problem. New mini replaces a 2012 iMac at the same position which had rock solid wifi. Now I've got horrific ping times , lots of dropped packets, and regular intervals of no connection on 2.4 and 4ghz networks. Tried everything I've seen on this thread with no improvement until I connected the mini via ethernet to the mesh node directly and now I have a nice consistent connection aided by a $100 external antenna. I'm really hoping this is a software issue but my hunch is it's a physical design problem with antenna shielding as I did notice some minor improvement by moving the mini as far from interference as possible.

new MacBook Pro M2 Max - same problem

I am having the same issue on new MacBook Pro M2 Max, Venture 13.2. But I was also using a Thunderbolt 3 connected ethernet cable. If I disabled my Mac's WIFI things start working correctly. But with both WIFI and ethernet enable, I would get strange errors accessing web pages, failures to load page, network connection reset, and other random networking errors.

Well one bandaid fix i noticed that helps the wifi signal: turn the mac mini on its left side (Apple logo facing left). That improves my signal strength but signal noise is till sitting between 25-30% consistently.

Further to my post earlier in this thread, I spent some time over the weekend, trying everything I could think of and that has been mentioned here, to resolve this issue, but to no avail. My Mac mini M2 still won't connect reliably, or stay connected to a combined 2.4Ghz/5GHz network, and offers slow speeds when connected to the 2.4Ghz only network.

I already had the macOS Ventura 13.2.1 update installed, which hasn't helped at all.

Here's what I tried:

• Reset my Calix Gigaspire Blast u6 Wi-Fi 6 router to defaults which created a single combined 2.4/5Ghz network.
• Mac would only connect at 2.4GHz and would disconnect within a few seconds.
• Tried turning on and off and different combinations of various settings in the router (802.11ax, 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, DFS, MU-MIMO)
• Created a separate 2.4Ghz only network which the Mac would stay connected to, but Wi-Fi speeds were around half what the line is capable of (and other devices in the same location work at)
• Disconnected external devices (USB-C SSD, USB-C Monitor, HDMI Monitor) one-by-one and checked connection and speed - no change
• Tried swapping USB-C cables, which port devices were plugged into and a different HDMI cable - no change
• Put the Mac mini in a vertical position on the desk - no change
• Tried the terminal command to disable AWDL but it made no difference and I need AirDrop/Handoff etc. anyway
• My iPhone 12 and 2012 Mac mini sat on the same desk both connect to 5Ghz and at the full connection speed.

I don't know what else to try.

As everyone with an M2 Mac mini is still within their 90 day complementary technical support period, I'd suggest we all contact Apple Support and reference this discussion to hopefully get it some attention, and show it's an issue affecting many people, not just a few.

Apple Complimentary Support - Official Apple Support

A further observation I've made is that my internet connection will also drop out for a few seconds whenever I wake my nearby iPhone, so it seems this could be related to iPhone <> Mac technologies such as HandOff, AirDrop etc.

I've found a very useful free menubar app that monitors the internet connection and shows the internet dropouts very clearly for anyone who wants to monitor their own connection: https://getpingr.app/

It works well and lowers the ping to a normal level with the repeater wired to the computer through an ethernet cable. But there is a small loss of upload and download speeds when it goes through the repeater.

Thanks for sharing, glad it worked for you on the Mac Mini. Unfortunately, MacBooks for example, you cannot do those steps. Disabling AWDL fixes all Mac's.

Can you do me a favor, as this has been suggested before and always had opposite results. This is assuming you have services such as Airplay, Airdrop, Sidecar, and bluetooth still enabled.

Hold down option and click your WiFi icon. What channel are you using? Next, open a terminal and ping your gateway IP or another LAN device. The pings should stay around 2-7ms. Here's 2 examples of what you should see (first picture) and what 1000's of others are seeing with AWDL on (second picture).

“sudo ifconfig awdl0 down” will re-enable automatically. While testing, every 30s or so, run that command. Still doing it?

Please use “ping”. PrettyPing is PrettyAnnoying to read.

After this, if the 5,740 issues are still persistent, maybe you should consider re-installing MacOS. Your Mac has the most issues out of everyone.

That’s better pings, but as you said, your WiFi uses channel 44. You’re outside the US, so you’re using the fixed AWDL channel.

Your pings are still double the norm, but I’m confident that’s because you’re using mesh.

Apple has major Mac mini problem. Wifi doesn't work properly and they didn't admit it yet.

Here's my story:

After one month of using my Mac I gave it to polish apple support (iSpot). They found wifi problem and ordered mainboard from Apple. After one month of waiting (!) then changing support to smaller one (communication with ispot support was awful) they (the smaller polish support) finally changed my mainboard. In Macs mini case it's actually whole computer. And know here I am with my "fixed" mac still not working. Download speed drops on wifi from 750Mbs to 200Mbs or less depends on mood I guess. This is unacceptable. Now I have two options: 1. wait for Apple to admit and fix this issue or exchange/repair program 2. Try to get my money from shop where i bought this Mac and buy older version with m1 pro. Both options are frustrating and give me shivers. I am full of disappointment.