Have you ever had the problem where you open your laptop and log on to public wifi and the stupid public wifi login screen will not pop up?
This happens to me on my Mac and sometimes on my phone. It is happening to me right now (so I’m positing this via LTE iPhone hotspot). Drives me crazy.
I’ve seen some articles about changing the adapter Mac address – and other shell stuff. I’ve seen some articles about changing DNS servers (really?). I cannot imagine I really need to do something like that.
Anyone know a great fix for this in the field? Sound like a perfect opportunity for a $1.99 app in the App Store. FixWiFi.app
When this happens try opening neverssl.com. It’s a website that only uses http (hence the name) and its purpose is to solve issues like this one. Because it’s not https it allows redirects and that should send you to the login page.
I’ve had this issue (amongst others) since upgrading to Catalina and it has driven me crazy. Spent a lot of time with various network tech support people. What we discovered is that my Mac connects to the network, get’s allocated an IP address etc, but the login in screen for the network never appears - and in fact cannot be displayed since something makes the Mac think that it is not connected to the Internet.
Solution (a bit messy but it works). Reboot in Safe Mode (hold down Shift until you see an Apple logo while restarting). Connect to the network (it works here for some reason. Then reboot normally again and it will work.
Rosemary, that is such a great tip!! Unfortunately it seems that the captive portals have not kept pace with the global uptake in forcing SSL. Thank you.