When you take your MacBook to a coffee shop, an airport, or a new office building, you may notice that macOS aggressively attempts to connect you to the internet. If you are not connected to a known network, a pop-up window will repeatedly appear in the center of your screen, displaying a list of nearby public Wi-Fi networks and asking if you want to join them.
While this is intended to be helpful, it is a significant nuisance if you simply want to work offline, or if you prefer to rely on your iPhone’s personal hotspot. Constantly having to click “Cancel” to dismiss the “Join Network” prompt disrupts your workflow. You can easily instruct macOS to silently ignore unknown networks.
How to Disable the “Ask to Join Networks” Prompt
You can turn off this aggressive network polling directly in the macOS Wi-Fi settings.
- Click the Apple Logo in the absolute top-left corner of your Mac’s screen.
- Select System Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Wi-Fi.
- Scroll down the main Wi-Fi window until you see a section labelled “Ask to join networks.”
- By default, this is likely set to “Known networks” or “Ask.” Look for the drop-down menu next to this setting.
- Click the drop-down menu and change the setting to Off.
- (Note: On older versions of macOS, you will find a simple checkbox labelled “Ask to join new networks.” Simply uncheck this box.)
From now on, when your MacBook loses its connection to a saved network (like your home Wi-Fi), it will remain disconnected in the background. It will no longer scan the area and push intrusive dialogue boxes onto your screen. When you actually want to connect to a public network, you will need to manually click the Wi-Fi icon in the top right menu bar and select it yourself.