How to Delete a Wi-Fi Network on a Mac

Cleaning Up Your Saved Networks

Every time you connect your Mac to a new wireless network—whether it is a hotel lobby, an airport lounge, a friend’s house, or a local coffee shop—the macOS operating system permanently memorises the network name and password. This is designed for your convenience, allowing you to instantly reconnect the next time you walk into that building.

However, over several years of ownership, your Mac can accumulate hundreds of obsolete network profiles. This massive list of saved networks can actually cause significant connectivity problems. If you live in an apartment building and your Mac keeps trying to automatically connect to a weak, unstable public hotspot down the street instead of your own fast home router, you need to intervene.

By forcing your Mac to “forget” or delete a specific Wi-Fi network, you prevent it from ever attempting to connect to that signal again unless you manually select it and re-enter the password.

How to Delete a Wi-Fi Network in System Settings

Apple makes it relatively straightforward to purge old networks, though the process looks slightly different depending on whether you are running a modern version of macOS (Ventura, Sonoma, or later) or an older version.

For macOS Ventura and Newer:

1. Click the Apple Logo in the extreme top left corner of your screen.
2. Select System Settings from the drop-down menu.
3. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Wi-Fi.
4. Scroll down to the very bottom of the Wi-Fi settings page and click the Advanced… button.
5. You will now see a section labelled Known Networks, displaying a long list of every router your Mac has ever connected to.
6. Scroll through the list until you find the specific network you want to delete (e.g., “Starbucks WiFi”).
7. Click the button with three small dots next to the network name.
8. Select Remove From List from the pop-up menu.
9. Click Remove again to confirm your choice.

For macOS Monterey and Older:

1. Click the Apple Logo > System Preferences.
2. Click on the Network icon.
3. Ensure Wi-Fi is selected in the left-hand sidebar.
4. Click the Advanced… button in the bottom right corner.
5. Under the “Wi-Fi” tab, you will see your list of Preferred Networks.
6. Click once on the name of the network you want to delete to highlight it in blue.
7. Click the minus (-) button located directly beneath the list.
8. Click OK, and then crucially, click Apply in the bottom right corner of the main window to save your changes.

How to Change Network Priority (Without Deleting)

Sometimes you do not want to completely delete a network; you just want your Mac to stop prioritising it. For example, if you have both a 2.4GHz and a 5GHz network in your home, and your Mac stubbornly connects to the slower 2.4GHz signal every time you reboot.

Instead of deleting the 2.4GHz network, you can simply rearrange the priority order.

1. Navigate back to the Known Networks or Preferred Networks list (using the steps above).
2. In older versions of macOS, this list is strictly ranked. The Mac attempts to connect to the network at the very top of the list first. If it cannot find it, it moves to number two, and so on.
3. Simply click and drag your preferred, fastest home network to the absolute top of the list.
4. Drag the slower, less desirable networks to the bottom.

Note: In newer versions of macOS (Ventura and later), Apple has largely automated network priority using machine learning, making manual drag-and-drop ordering less effective. If your modern Mac keeps choosing the wrong network, you must turn off “Auto-Join” for that specific network, forcing the Mac to only connect when you explicitly click it.

The iCloud Keychain Effect

It is vital to understand that Apple syncs your Wi-Fi passwords across all your devices using iCloud Keychain.

If you delete “Hotel-Guest-WiFi” from your Mac using the steps above, iCloud will instantly communicate that deletion to your iPhone and iPad. Those devices will also immediately forget the network and its password.

This is generally highly beneficial, as it allows you to clean up your digital footprint across your entire Apple ecosystem from a single computer.