Wi-Fi is unstable after macOS Tahoe update on MacBook Air

I also have this with my MacBook Air m4:

Wifi Symbol looks normal, but nothing is working anymore.

My workaround is disabling and enabling Wifi it to make it work again.

But yeah, this is a thing since Tahoe.

It worked fine for a couple days, then I needed to use Airdrop for something so I turned it on to Contacts Only, and left it on to see what would happen. After a few hours the issue came back. I left Airdrop switched on and rebooted, and now it's been working fine for about a day or so. I expect it is likely to come back as long as I leave Airdrop on, but good to know that a reboot seems like a workable temporary fix.

I have basically the same issue; it appeared on every single network I connect to, as long as I'm more than 5 meters away from the router; If I'm right next to my home router everything seems fine. I haven't found a working solution yet, and I don't want to risk anything destructive. I do see some interesting correlations: RSSI and Noise are all in normal range but MCS and Tx Rate are way lower than expected. It does help a little to be in a direct line with router but not much. I've also found this out of the console app: `Apple80211Scan:1502 @[1177.359131] ifname['en0'], total time [0.004092], err[-528350195], Apple80211Scan Failed`, anyone knows what this means?

PS. I've tried creating a new network config, forgetting the network, running Wireless Diagnostics (which just tells me to revise best practices for wifi). Pinging my router is unpredictable, sometimes resulting in ```100 packets transmitted, 98 packets received, 2% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.359/4.743/12.269/2.030 ms```

and sometimes 70% packet loss and max 140ms latency. I'm kinda disappointed at how rushed Apple seems to be with Tahoe, first a bunch of minor issues, now this??? PPS. As I'm writing this my Wifi went out again and couldn't save this. my Mac also seem to have auto-forgotten my wifi password and just asked me to enter my wifi password (all correctly) 3 times...

MacOS 26.2 Tahoe, 2021 MBP running M1pro+16GRAM

SO, in even MORE annoying news, here's my latest attempt at a fix:

• create a new APFS container on internal SSD & install Tahoe 26.2
• set up "as a new mac" and then use Migration Assistant to bring over ONLY the affected user account, not the Applications folder or anything else

Problem still persists, exactly the same stupid behavior. So it's a user account issue that persists across volume migration.

So the only possible solution I can think we're left with is to create a fresh new user account and manually transfer over every single thing, which I'd very much rather NOT do, that sounds incredibly annoying.

OR to start going through every single random user Library folder and wiping out everything we can in the hope we catch the culprit??? That sounds equally bad.

Does anyone know the best path for getting some higher-level Apple engineer involved in trying to find a fix? I'm envisioning hours of dead ends talking to low-level support / genius bar people telling me to wipe and reinstall my OS for the 10th time.

Similar issues on a 2020 Intel MBP running Tahoe 26.1. Wifi will connect, then drop, reconnect once I select the network, then drop again. This will repeat two or three times after startup or waking from sleep before it seems relatively stable. I updated to 26.2 and the issue is still present, but I didn't see this before 26.1 at all either.

There have been a lot of newer posts since that one. Set this thread to sort by Newest so you can check the progress that's been made since then.

Having the same issues. Out of the blue the wifi just stops working get the spinning colorful ball. I can't force quit apps, & have to do a force restart by holding my finger on the power button. Happens either at initial startup or a few hours into using my macbook air M2 but every single day. Just performed a force restart after using my mac for over an hour.

Think Apple must have brought over Microsoft Techs bc this never happened in the past. Roll out of new os' were seamless. Now they are always buggy. Apple needs to do better.

Spent 1.5 hrs w apple support & got nowhere. They couldn't even tell if it is a known issue to be addressed in the next update.

For anyone keeping track, the manual IP only worked for a little while, now it's back to the same old (running a 2020 M1 MBP on 26.1. Wifi performs well enough for most purposes but trying to use my Shadow remote gaming PC, the latency and packet loss is all over the place. Guess I'm stuck on ethernet for now, or using my old 2013 MBP that has no problem at all.

So for me, after having everything switched back on, it worked for about 1 day and then started having the same problem again. So I switched everything back off but it didn't fix right away, then after a restart with everything still off it started working normally...not sure if the settings or the restart made the difference. I'm testing just leaving them all off for now to see if it seems stable long-term. If so I'll start re-enabling things one by one.

I tried everything said here even set static IP for my devices but both my iPhone SE 2020 and my. Mackbook Air 2020 M1 are having problems with my home wifi...

Is there any other fix I can try?

I'm still keeping a close eye on this thread. It is unbelievable to me that this type of regression exists, but it's very present for me and very painful to work with at times. I SSH into a number of devices in my home for various reasons and the latency and packet loss makes that experience maddening.

Not sure what more to try at this point. I'm presently testing with 5Ghz disabled across the four APs I have in my home. Wondering if the same behavior still occurs on 2.4Ghz. Shows how desperate I am for a fix, I suppose.

FWIW, this is my machine:

- **Model Name**: MacBook Pro

- **Model Identifier**: Mac15,9

- **Chip**: Apple M3 Max

- **Memory**: 48 GB

- **macOS Version**: macOS 26.2 (25C56)

Have you updated to Tahoe 26.2 today. Not that I think it will help the problems you are having since it is beginning to sound more like a faulty hardware problem. Hardware does fail on Mac's like on anything that man builds. On a old Mac I had some years ago the Bluetooth module went south on me.

I would suggest that you first download EtreCheck and run it to see if it can find anything wrong with the Mac

. It's free to use. https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html. Here is a link written by some with a lot knowledge about using it. Once you have run it you can post the results (In Etrecheck, click Share Report > Copy Report,) to a comment

Crazy — I had the exact same issue after updating to macOS Tahoe. My Wi-Fi would constantly cut out and sometimes wouldn’t detect any networks at all. I ended up factory-resetting my 2019 MacBook Pro back to macOS Catalina, which meant wiping everything on my laptop (super upsetting), but once I did that my Wi-Fi worked perfectly again with no issues. So I’m guessing the new update has some kind of glitch.

Thank you! Fingers crossed, this appears to be the fix for me as well.