Post-install Wi-Fi fix (feature request)

[top-master]

Hi, my Wi-Fi was failing to turn on, and only a restart would fix the issue temporarily.

That seems to be a known issue with macOS updates, And on StackOverflow I found the permanent solution:

Old preferences hanging around after upgrade can cause issues.
To force a rebuild of the preferences open Terminal and do:

cd /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
sudo rm NetworkInterfaces.plist
sudo rm com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
sudo rm preferences.plist

Finally, reboot system to let macOS auto-generate above removed settings.

1. I request those commands to be run automatically by post-install thing.
2. In case you are concerned about the old files (and that someone may need them), they should get backed up in "/Users/Shared/Relocated Items" directory.
3. And finally, you don't need to mention Relocated Items in the GUI; simply create the link on desktop (if macOS Installer did not create it already for us).

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Update; someone reported that more files need to be removed, to make this work for more people:

cd /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration

sudo rm NetworkInterfaces.plist
sudo rm com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
sudo rm preferences.plist

sudo rm com.apple.network.identification.plist
sudo rm preferences-pre-upgrade-source.plist
sudo rm NetworkInterfaces-pre-upgrade-source.plist
sudo rm preferences-pre-upgrade-new-target.plist
sudo rm NetworkInterfaces-pre-upgrade-new-target.plist
sudo rm com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist
sudo rm com.apple.network.eapolclient.configuration.plist

But don't forget to reboot instantly to re-generate (else not having above files causes issues, instead of fixing).

[namrehcram]

This fix worked for me!

[will2k21]

Many Thanks @top-master for this post. Had the same issue for sometime and this worked instantly. Much appreciated!

[spacec0w2]

This has now fixed a handful of machines with this exact same problem. It seems to be the definitive fix. Thanks for finding and posting it!

Given the history of other Patcher installers (High Siera, Mojave and now Catalina), once the final version is released and people have moved on, there are no more updates to the installer itself. For Mojave this is pretty annoying because right off the bat, unless you "reinstall all" patches, there are often issues that could be avoided if they were all included in the install. Catalina seems like it will be the same, with 1.4.4 released 5/28/2020. I understand this is not a lucrative project, but this would be a super useful thing to add as @top-master suggests. But it will likely never happen, even though these patches are probably used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, if not millions. It seems like dosdude1 has moved on, which is fine and very normal, but it would be nice if there could some way to push this forward a tiny bit. A GoFundMe for example?

[captfanta]

It seems to be a good fix for a lot of people, but I'm on a MacBookPro6,1 (mid-2010) with Catalina 19H2 build, and it dosen't fix my case. I've tried trashing the files but every time WIFI is down (by disconnecting, sleep mode, etc.) I need to reconnect with the Terminal.

[whenmusicattacks]

this is one of the reason i am still on patched mojave

[Sabbir215]

This perfectly solved my WiFi connection issue. Thanks a lot top-master. I really really appreciate it.

[WilliamSmithEdward]

Adding a +1, thank you for this quick fix. This helped me get wi-fi working again after using dosdude's patcher to update my mid-2011 MacBook air to OSX Catalina.