Blog Archives
wifi display – simple network awareness
Ever wished you could see at a glance whether your network has changed without having to click on the Wifi icon in the Status bar to check the currently active connection? I know I have, particularly when toting the laptop between work, home and coffee shop.
Although you can require admin approval for changing networks in System Preferences, in practice that can often be quite disruptive. It also has the potential to expose your login password in public places or situations where it might be awkward or inconvenient to insist on privacy while you type it in.
It would be easier, it seemed to me, if I could just always see the name of the currently connected network in the Status bar, instead of having to actively go and look to see if it has changed.
I decided to solve the problem by writing my own little Wifi Display utility, which I’m sharing here for free for anyone that has a similar need.
The Wifi Display.app simply displays the currently active SSID Wifi name in the Status bar. You can command-drag the Wifi name along the Status bar to move it next to your Wifi icon for visual contiguity. The app is sandboxed and signed with my Apple developer ID.
Wifi Display is free to use and requires macOS 10.10 Yosemite or higher.
Share and enjoy! 🙂
disable captive network assistant
If you use coffee shop wifi services or others that require internet login, you’ve probably noticed in both Lion and Mountain Lion that OS X will produce a pop-up Safari window asking you to login. This can be annoying for several reasons:
1. The window floats on top and gets in the way if you’re trying to do something else
2. The window doesn’t keep cookies or allow plug-ins like 1Password, so you have to enter the login details manually every time
3. Sometimes the pop-up window will simply produce an error message that it can’t connect to the network. You either have to dismiss it manually or wait for it to go (it’ll normally auto-close after about 30 seconds)
If you find this behaviour annoying and want to stop it, there’s a very simple solution (and one that’s also easy to undo if you want to reverse it). Here’s what you do.
1. First go to
[Hard Disk] > System > Library > CoreServices > Captive Network Assistant.app
Click on the app once, and hit ‘return’ on your keyboard. This will make the name editable.
2. Hit the ‘left arrow’ key once to move the cursor to the beginning of the name and to unselect the text.
3. Type an ‘X’ (actually any letter will do, but I like ‘X’ so I can easily find the app later at the bottom of the list even if I forgot its exact name).
4. Hit ‘return’ on the keyboard. At this point, OS X will ask you to provide an Admin password as only Admin users are allowed to mess with files in the System directory. Type in your password and hit ‘OK’.
The name should now read ‘XCaptive Network Assistant.app’.
And that’s it! Captive Network Assistant will never run again unless you decide to change its name back to what it was (to do so, just repeat the procedure above and remove the ‘X’). Of course, you can still login to your internet or coffee shop wifi services by opening a normal browser window. The bonus is now your browser can fill the login details from cookies (if enabled) or your password manager.
🙂
featured picture: illuminated jellyfish by weaverglenn
how to make your battery last a bit longer
Here’s a couple of tricks you can use to eek a bit more life out of your old battery between recharges.
1. Turn off the keyboard backlights by pressing F5.
2. Turn off Bluetooth in the menu bar.
3. If you’re not using the Internet, turn off Wifi in the menu bar.
4. If you are using the internet, but you’re not expecting or bothered about receiving mail for a time, quit Mail or any other email client app. If you still want to check your email and you use a web-based mail service like GMail, you’ll use less battery power if you quit Mail, and open GMail directly in your browser window.
5. Reduce the hard disk drive sleep time (formerly known as ‘spindown’). By default, your Mac will power down the hard disk after 10 minutes inactivity on battery power. You could try setting that to 5 minutes (any less, and you’ll probably lose what you gain as the the HD will end up having to power up more often than necessary).
To do so, open Terminal, and copy/paste this command:
sudo pmset -b disksleep 5
After pressing ‘Return’ on your keyboard, you will need to enter your password, which will be invisible when you type it (so type carefully).
If you want to change it back to its default anytime in the future, just use the same command but change the ‘5’ to ’10’.
This doesn’t affect the spindown time when you’re on mains power.
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