How do I conpletely disable the wifi on MAC studio?

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How do I conpletely disable the wifi on MAC studio?

I have two Mac Studios. On M1 and one M2. Plus a laptop and iphone. I want the studio to never use the wifi. I use a NAS and need them connected via the LAN cable. Which is plugged in. Anyways, from time to time it connects to wifi. No idea why. Maybe a system update who knows. I turn the wifi off and it re-connects eventually. Maybe a few weeks later maybe a few months. But it always re-connects. If I remove the wifi name and password. It also removes it from my iphone and laptop, annoying. Long story short if want to conmpletely remove it from the studio (2 of them) can this be done?

Using Ventura 13.5.1

Mac Studio

Posted on Aug 27, 2023 7:43 PM

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Answer 1

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Servant of Cats

Level 8

40,923 points

Aug 28, 2023 1:37 AM in response to aroomstudios

I could be missing something, but it seems like all you should need to do is to

Open System Settings
Click on Wi-Fi to bring up the Wi-Fi pane
Use the slider at the top of the right-hand side of the pane to turn WiFi off

For good measure, I suppose that you could scroll down to the bottom of the right-hand pane, click the Advanced… button, and then tell the system to "Require administrator authorization to … Turn Wi-Fi on or off." (Seems like that should be unnecessary.)

Just found something else interesting (with a quick Google search):

Wifi turns On automatically after rebooti… - Apple Community

Apparently, if Ventura learns to "Auto-Join" a Wi-Fi network, and you restart your Mac, it will try to join the network again even if that means turning Wi-Fi back on! The recommended solution is to go through your Known Networks, click the "circle with …" icons, and uncheck Auto-Join for all such networks.

After that, maybe setting the main Wi-Fi switch to the "off" position will stick.

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Answer 2

Aug 28, 2023 6:38 AM in response to aroomstudios

Your Mac uses the TOPMOST, Working interface in system preferences > network to connect to the Internet. If Ethernet is not TOPMOST, use the gear icon under the list of interfaces to "Set Service Order' and drag Ethernet Topmost.

When Ethernet is not plugged in, it will not be working, the the next-in-line interface will be used.

Once you make this adjustment, you can leave Wi-Fi ON, so it can provide location services. Wi-Fi will not be used to connect to the Internet,

With both interfaces active, the 'shortest' path to your NAS should still be your high speed Ethernet connection. if your NAS has a Wi-fi connection, I would turn that off.

If you use a VPN that you installed yourself, you risk having ALL traffic (including NAS traffic that should stay local) sent to you VPN provider, then sent back to your NAS.

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