iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite users have been plagued by a host of Wi-Fi problems since Apple’s two latest operating systems were released. Apple has released updates for both, but to no avail: People keep suffering through Wi-Fi drops, seemingly at random.
What the heck’s going on? According to one developer, the issue is caused by the custom technology that Apple uses for AirDrop and AirPlay on both iOS 8 and OS X. And there’s a way to fix it!
Mario Ciabarra, the developer behind MiWi, explains the issue on Medium:
I’ve narrowed down the issue to the use of Apple’s Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) that is used for AirDrop, AirPlay, and Gaming connections. I’ll go out on a limb and say the WiFi issues are because of Apple’s choice of using Bonjour over AWDL and that, given the constraints of the WiFi hardware, this will be difficult to get right. But perhaps I’m crazy, and this is just a bug that can be fixed by Apple.
You can duplicate the problem yourself by performing a speed test, then opening Control Center while it’s running (as seen in the video below).
So how do you fix the Wi-Fi problem? If you’re running iOS 8, and have a jailbroken device, you can download a package from Cydia called WiFried that will allow you to disable AWDL, and can conveniently be turned on and off under the AirDrop settings in Control Center.
As for OS X Yosemite? Just open up Terminal and type in the following command to disable AWDL and AirDrop:
sudo ifconfig awdl0 down
And to restore AirDrop and AWDL:
sudo ifconfig awdl0 up
I’ve been lucky enough not to experience the rampant Wi-Fi problems other people are reporting, so let us know if this works for you!
Source: Medium
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
17 responses to “How to fix Wi-Fi problems in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite”
Disabling a key feature of OS X is not a fix, and neither is jailbreaking your iPhone. For those of us who don’t want to hack our devices, this is useless.
How could this possibly be a problem if you don’t use AirDrop? I don’t use it, so I’m disabling it. And there’s an option to restore it, so not much harm can be done, really.
If you read the linked article, you’d see that it doesn’t matter if AirDrop is enabled or not, the problem still occurs.
For older MacBooks, which mine isn’t. So still worth a try.
No, its a workaround, not a fix. However in the absence of a fix this is a great workaround if it turns out to work. For myself, on my mac, my wifi dropped 3 or 4 times this morning in the first 10 minutes of use. then i tried the terminal command and for the last half hour it hasn’t dropped. So far so good. I imagine the average Mac user rarely uses Airdrop, so turning it off to have reliable wifi again would be a minor inconvenience for the majority. And for those who need it occasionally, turning it back on again takes a few seconds. Until Apple sorts this out , its a win
I would agree that jailbreaking the iPhone, if your iPhone has issues, isn’t really a solution that the average person should have to consider. I’m not sure how much of a problem the wifi issue is on the iPhone. I get the impression its a far less widespread thing, but that may just be because I’ve had issue on my mac and not on my 2 iPhones a 4s and a 5.
What wifi issues? The only wifi problem I have is that Verizon FIOS is throttling bandwidth to my Apple TV when I try to stream iTunes rentals. Interestingly, streaming the same content to my Apple TV via Air Play from iOS devices or Macs solves the issue. Thanks for being sleazy Verizon!
Interesting, no desire to jailbreak my phone again though. It got too unstable and felt like my old Android all over again. I also use Airdrop and Airplay all the time. Not having the issue but I was curious.
This command worked perfectly for me (10.10.1). I trying to connect to campus wifi/MS Exchange server and it was knocking me off at work but not at home. Huh? Now I have no problems (drops & disconnects) at work after the terminal command and will test it at home. Thanks!
What is strange is that this seems like a basic problem not dependent on unique configurations. So why isn’t this a problem for *everyone*?
My first observation is that my MacBook Pro work much faster, finding web sites!
Does not fix the problem for me. 5G still drops out.
I have no such problems, thankfully. Both Yosemite and iOS8 on my 6 plus are perfect.
Did not work on iMac running Yosemite.
http://itweakers.com/top-10/tweaks/wifried-fix-ios-8-wifi-issue/
Both iOS 8 and Yosemite made Wi-Fi actually more stable for me. My MBP reconnects to my Wi-Fi immediately after I wake it, instead of the 5-10 second it had on Mavericks. Though that could also be because of the second SSD I added to it.
Anyway, no problems here!
Maybe I’m one of those unlucky ones huh?
Didn’t work for me. Nothing works. This occurred when I first bought my iMac mid 2011. Didn’t work right out of the box. Resetting the SMC is what fixed it. This time, no such luck. Apple is no longer the “it just works” company. Them days are gone. iOS 8 was a nightmare for me. It was so bad that I wrote Tim Cook a flame broiled email. I got a phone call from Apple 3 hours later and they replaced the phone.
I used to love the days when major software updates were released. It was like Christmas morning. From now on, I wait…