Over the lifespan of a MacBook, it is easy to accumulate dozens, if not hundreds, of saved Wi-Fi networks. Every hotel, coffee shop, airport, and friend’s house you visit gets permanently logged into your system settings. While macOS tries to automatically connect you to known networks, retaining a massive list of old connections can occasionally cause conflicts, especially if a network changes its security protocol but keeps the same name.
Furthermore, from a security standpoint, broadcasting a list of your previously trusted networks (a process known as a probe request) can technically leak information about where you have travelled. If you want to clean up your network list, you need to manually force your Mac to “forget” these old, unused Wi-Fi connections.
Forgetting a Wi-Fi Network in System Settings
The process for removing a saved network was updated significantly when Apple redesigned the System Settings app in macOS Ventura and later versions.
- Click on the Apple menu (the small Apple logo) in the very top-left corner of your screen.
- Select System Settings from the dropdown menu.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Wi-Fi.
- Scroll down the main Wi-Fi panel until you reach the very bottom. Click the button labelled Advanced….
- A new window will open. Look at the section titled Known Networks. This is a complete, alphabetical list of every single Wi-Fi network your Mac currently remembers.
- Scroll through the list to find the specific network you wish to remove.
- Click the small button with three horizontal dots located directly to the right of the network’s name.
- Select Remove From List from the pop-up menu.
The Impact of iCloud Keychain Syncing
When you click “Remove From List”, the network profile and its associated password are instantly deleted from your Mac’s internal storage.
However, it is crucial to understand that if you use iCloud Keychain (which most Apple users do by default), this deletion will instantly synchronise across all your other connected Apple devices. If you forget a network on your MacBook, your iPhone and iPad will simultaneously forget that network as well. If you ever visit that location again in the future, you will have to manually select the network and type in the password as if it were your very first time connecting.