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Why, oh why hasn't El Capitan fixed Mac's most infamous WiFi issue after all these years!!!

sniffies

sniffies

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Original poster
Jul 31, 2005
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somewhere warm, dark, and cozy
Issue: WiFi does not auto-reconnect on wake.

I'm not sure whether it's a software or a hardware issue, but it has persisted on my 2014 and 2015 MBPs running Yosemite, and still does in El Capitan. Mind you, my mid-2011 MBA has no such issue. It auto-reconnects just fine. What gives?

I was really hoping that El Capitan would fix it, even though it's still in beta.

Is anyone else experiencing this?
 
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MikhailT

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Nov 12, 2007
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sniffies said:
Are everyone's Energy Saver settings set on default?
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by there, there are a lot of settings in Energy Saver. Do you mean "Wake for network access"? I have it on both Macs as well as "Power Nap".

I have zero problems on either '12 rMBP 15" and iMac 5K with the Wi-Fi on El Cap, no wake up for sleep issue either, it woke up and was connected right away.

Is El Cap an upgrade to Yosemite on all of your problematic Macs? If yes, try doing a clean install on one of them to see if it would fix it. Upgrading doesn't reset all settings to factory settings and it is possible some of your files are just not set correctly.
 
sniffies

sniffies

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MikhailT said:
Not sure what you mean by there, there are a lot of settings in Energy Saver. Do you mean "Wake for network access"? I have it on both Macs as well as "Power Nap".

I have zero problems on either '12 rMBP 15" and iMac 5K with the Wi-Fi on El Cap, no wake up for sleep issue either, it woke up and was connected right away.

Is El Cap an upgrade to Yosemite on all of your problematic Macs? If yes, try doing a clean install on one of them to see if it would fix it. Upgrading doesn't reset all settings to factory settings and it is possible some of your files are just not set correctly.
Click to expand...
Yes, both Macs have clean installs of El Capitan. And both Macs had the same issue in Yosemite out of the box.

By the way, these are Mac's default Energy Saver settings:

1.png

2.png
 
M

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
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Yea, I have zero problems with these default settings on all of my Macs.

Maybe try turning off 5Ghz radio on your router, see if it is more stable in general. I've seen quite a bit of people mentioned this before.
 
BrettApple

BrettApple

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Apr 3, 2010
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I always wondered about this since I haven't had any issues with the devices listed (on Yosemite): Mid 2007 iMac, Late 2008 MacBook, Early 2009 MacBook, Mid 2009 13" MBP, Mid 2010 15" MBP, and my Late 2013 13" rMBP.

BUT, I took delivery of a brand new 2015 MacBook Air two weeks ago, i5/8GB/256GB with Yosemite preinstalled (10.10.3) (everything else was upgrade or clean install) and it doesn't connect about 90% of the time. So I have to toggle it off and on to get it to connect again. So this is an issue, but it doesn't seem to show up on every device. But for one that has been doing it since I took it out of the box with zero software installed by me I will say that it can and does happen. I have seen it a few times on my rMBP and the 2009 MBP intermittently. But not nearly as often as this MBA.

I do remember this happening on the Yosemite DP and betas and even up to the final release in which I went back to Mavericks on my rMBP until a couple months back when the .3 update came out and I went ahead and upgraded. Our iMac won't stay asleep since the update with no other changes too, but I don't think that's related and I'm wiping it when El Cap comes out anyway. The thing has been upgraded every release since Tiger!

So yeah, it does happen, just not on every Mac.

Oh, and it does this on all networks, not just some. I've got an AirPort Extreme at my parents house, a crappy AT&T modem/gateway/router deal at the place I'm renting, an enterprise class UniFi AP network at work that I've been setting up along with a few AirPort Expresses in adjacent buildings and the MacBook Air doesn't reconnect to any of them after waking from sleep. Sometimes it will, but only if it's been asleep for a short moment or hasn't left the building. This is a mix of 802.11g, n at 2.4GHz and 5GHz. So that doesn't seem to matter either.
 
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sniffies

sniffies

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BrettApple said:
I always wondered about this since I haven't had any issues with the devices listed (on Yosemite): Mid 2007 iMac, Late 2008 MacBook, Early 2009 MacBook, Mid 2009 13" MBP, Mid 2010 15" MBP, and my Late 2013 13" rMBP.

BUT, I took delivery of a brand new 2015 MacBook Air two weeks ago, i5/8GB/256GB with Yosemite preinstalled (10.10.3) (everything else was upgrade or clean install) and it doesn't connect about 90% of the time. So I have to toggle it off and on to get it to connect again. So this is an issue, but it doesn't seem to show up on every device. But for one that has been doing it since I took it out of the box with zero software installed by me I will say that it can and does happen. I have seen it a few times on my rMBP and the 2009 MBP intermittently. But not nearly as often as this MBA.

I do remember this happening on the Yosemite DP and betas and even up to the final release in which I went back to Mavericks on my rMBP until a couple months back when the .3 update came out and I went ahead and upgraded. Our iMac won't stay asleep since the update with no other changes too, but I don't think that's related and I'm wiping it when El Cap comes out anyway. The thing has been upgraded every release since Tiger!

So yeah, it does happen, just not on every Mac.

Oh, and it does this on all networks, not just some. I've got an AirPort Extreme at my parents house, a crappy AT&T modem/gateway/router deal at the place I'm renting, an enterprise class UniFi AP network at work that I've been setting up along with a few AirPort Expresses in adjacent buildings and the MacBook Air doesn't reconnect to any of them after waking from sleep. Sometimes it will, but only if it's been asleep for a short moment or hasn't left the building. This is a mix of 802.11g, n at 2.4GHz and 5GHz. So that doesn't seem to matter either.
Click to expand...
This is exactly the issue I'm having. My old mid-2011 MBA auto-reconnects to WiFi without a problem. However, my two MBPs from mid-2014 and mid-2015 fail to auto-reconnect about 90% of the time.
 
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torana355

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sniffies said:
I don't believe that's the case. If it were faulty, WiFi wouldn't work at all.
Click to expand...
Well no thats not true, you can have a faulty chip that still works in some capacity. Think about it, if your wifi chip is fine, and i know the OS isnt the issue (mine works fine on all devices) then what else could it even be......
 
adrianlondon

adrianlondon

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torana355 said:
Thats because people with faulty wifi chips are mistakenly thinking its an OS bug.
Click to expand...
I doubt there are that many faulty chips.

I bought my (first ever) macbook towards the end of 2013; came with Mavericks. Had no wifi issues. Upgraded to Yosemite - no wifi issues. One release of Yosemite (10.10.2 I think?) gave me those wifi issues of it not connecting after resume from sleep, or sometimes on boot. Upgrading to 10.10.3 and 10.10.4 fixed it, and now still no issues on 10.11. In all that time I didn't change any hardware at all - so it's been the same router/modem the entire time.

So people who are having problems now, I believe it's a software issue. On El Capitan (or 10.10.4) it's not a discoveryd issue though. I'd suggest trying a different wifi router. FWIW I use a 5GHz network.
 
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torana355

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adrianlondon said:
I doubt there are that many faulty chips.

I bought my (first ever) macbook towards the end of 2013; came with Mavericks. Had no wifi issues. Upgraded to Yosemite - no wifi issues. One release of Yosemite (10.10.2 I think?) gave me those wifi issues of it not connecting after resume from sleep, or sometimes on boot. Upgrading to 10.10.3 and 10.10.4 fixed it, and now still no issues on 10.11. In all that time I didn't change any hardware at all - so it's been the same router/modem the entire time.
Click to expand...

Thats seems like a different issue altogether. Ive upgraded though all the versions of Yosemite on my 3 personal machines and 6 machines at work and none of them gave me wifi issues you explain. Actually the one other thing it could be is driver issues for the specific wifi chip in your machine.
 
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BrettApple

BrettApple

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You know what, I think I'll install a copy of Windows 8.1 or 10 and see what happens. If it works 100% of the time there I think the only thing to blame would be a bug in OS X.

And I don't think its a router issue if it does it with multiple routers and access points of different brands and using different bands and frequencies.

And Yosemite (and OS X for that matter) is kind of famous for WiFi issues as it is. As seen here, here, here, and here with many replies.

Off to install Windows...
 
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torana355

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BrettApple said:
You know what, I think I'll install a copy of Windows 8.1 or 10 and see what happens. If it works 100% of the time there I think the only thing to blame would be a bug in OS X.

And I don't think its a router issue if it does it with multiple routers and access points of different brands and using different bands and frequencies.

And Yosemite (and OS X for that matter) is kind of famous for WiFi issues as it is. As seen here, here, here, and here with many replies.

Off to install Windows...
Click to expand...

Thats not going to help your issue but feel free to waste your time doing so. Have you tried some of the suggestions in the links you posted? I do recall having to move bluetooth below wifi in service order to fix a wifi issue a few years ago.
 
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