Mac won’t display WiFi login box after upgrade to El Capitan

I don’t know if the upgrade to El Capitan is relevant or not, but lately I’ve noticed I can’t connect to the Internet via public WiFi hotspots with my MacBook Pro.

I can connect to WiFi networks themselves and say, my home WiFi network that requires a WPA password. But now when I connect to public WiFi hotspots I no longer get the modal window that usually asks me to log in using my account with that provider.

Is this a setting or something that may have been disabled in El Capitan? If so, how can I get my Mac to display those modals again? (I don’t even know what they’re called so not sure what search terms to use.)

Solution 1:

for me this trick always worked - even on the iphone!

Browse directly to the log in screen: http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html

Solution 2:

I resolved this issue by removing my custom DNS entries. I prefer to use Google Public DNS and this was disrupting the login screen.

I discovered the issue by running the Network Diagnostics app after experiencing this problem on a recently upgraded MBP Retina (Yosemite -> El Capitan). To run the app, do the following:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Choose Network
3. Click Assist me...
4. Click Diagnostics...
5. When the app starts, choose Wi-Fi and Continue
6. Troubleshoot any issues the app reports (your issues might be different than mine)

Solution 3:

After searching for hours, this solution worked: Resolving Stubborn Wi-Fi Connection Problems in Mac OS X

To summarize, turn your WiFi off, then move the following files to a folder on your Desktop (for example).

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.network.identification.plist

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

Then reboot, turn your WiFI back on, connect to the network, and the login dialog box should pop up. For me, the second listed above did not exist, so I just moved the other 3. If this works for you, you can delete the files that you moved.