Wi - Fi hotpots : As commodious as they are , they can be very annoying , as well . peculiarly when you ’re using a Mac or iPhone that ’s trying to link to a hot spot when you do n’t want it to .

Macworld reader Martin Joseph wants to dump one company ’s Wi - Fi hotspot in particular :

I wonder if you could figure out a way to sic a Mac toneverever connect to Xfinity Wi - Fi ? It would be with child to pass this in my iPhone , too . I have found that deleting it from the list of known networks is n’t the good choice , and I usually resort to impart it , but at lowest priority .

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Apple ’s Wi - Fi web control in macOS became kind of archaic many releases ago , and then Apple made it worse , removing a few features that have n’t render . you may delete web , as Martin note :

you’re able to also rearrange connection priority in whole tone 4 , so that you put favorite connection on top . This scrolling list can curve up with one C of ledger entry , as they roll up over time , and there ’s no elbow room to search through the list , see when the web was added , get geographic information about them , or any other data .

What Martin might be encounter is iCloud - based sync for Wi - Fi internet entries . If you have iCloud Keychain enable , every Mac and iOS gadget log into the same iCloud account syncs all Wi - Fi web parole . You may have mark this if you lumber in to a hotspot at a coffee bar that has a parole on your Mac , and then flex to an iPhone — it ’s already synchronise the password over the cellular connection , and has relate to the local connection .

mac 911 keychain wi fi login

However , it ’s possible that deleting mesh entryway from macOS does n’t remove the agree Keychain introduction that are being synchronise , and thus when an iPhone connects to an Xfinity mesh , the connection item are synced back . ( Xfinity practice a internet - free-base login process , but I believe Apple passes that data to its hotspot login organization , which intercepts portal screen and fills them with put in information . )

Keychain Access lets you peer into stored passwords for logins , including for Wi - Fi portals .

A way to test this and potentially resolve this pertinacious problem is to use Keychain Access in macOS , as you ca n’t manage Keychain entries directly in iOS . ( you could “ block ” a mesh via configurations > Wi - Fi > wiretap a meshwork in the vicinity and then solicit Forget This web and confirm . But it may not blue-pencil the Keychain accounting entry , either . )

Now return to the internet preference pane and follow all the steps above to be sure the entry does n’t remain , either .

It ’s potential this is just an iCloud Keychain sync exit , but there ’s no harm in cleaning out unwanted entries in Keychain Access , either .

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