Recreating macOS networking plists should not be done hastily, as it causes many networking settings to be reset to their defaults. Before clearing our these settings, please:
- Ensure your operating system is up-to-date and fully patched. Legacy and outdated version of macOS will have issues connecting to some wireless networks, including UVM’s. See this guide for more information on Legacy macOS and How to Upgrade.
- Remove outdated or redundant UVM profiles that impact your network settings, as outlined in this guide.
Click here for UVM’s instructions on connecting to UVM Wifi.
Recreating plists
This process will guide you through creating a folder on your desktop to temporarily store .plist files and moving some files to that folder. After a restart, you should be able to sign into wifi.
- Right-click your desktop and create a new folder named: network-plists
network-plists
- Open a Finder window, then click Go from the top bar and select Go to Folder.
- Enter /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/, then click Go.
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
- Find the following files, then hold down the Command key and click-drag them to the desktop folder you created in step 1. (Holding the command key moves the files instead of copying them.)
- com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
- com.apple.network.eapolclient.configuration
- com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist
- NetworkInterfaces.plist
- preferences.plist
- Verify you no longer see any of the above files in the SystemConfiguration folder, then restart your computer.
What is a plist
A plist is a file used by macOS and some other systems and frameworks that store properties. Most often these properties are user preferences and settings, many of which are set by default by macOS.
Upon reboot, if a given .plist file isn’t where the system expects it to be, a new one will be creating using default settings.