How to Use Wireless Diagnostics on your Mac

If you can connect to your Wi-Fi router but have issues loading webpages, sending or receiving email, or streaming music or video, you can use Wireless Diagnostics to analyze the network’s connection to the internet.

After the analysis is complete, you get a list of detected issues and possible solutions, and information about Wi-Fi best practices. And note that Wireless Diagnostics doesn’t change your network settings. To run the diagnostics:

° Quit all open apps.

° Join (or at least try) to join the Wi-Fi network you’re having problems with.

° Press and hold the Option key and click the WiFi icon.

° Choose Open Wireless Diagnostics.

° Follow the onscreen instructions to analyze your network connection.

After the analysis is complete, click the Info buttons in the Summary pane to learn more about each item in the list.

Wireless Diagnostics also generates a compressed file that contains details that may be useful to your network administrator, service provider, or IT support person.

The file is saved in the folder /var/tmp. The filename starts with WirelessDiagnostics and ends with .tar.gz.

To locate the file, click the Finder icon in the Dock, choose Go > Go to Folder, type /var/tmp, then press the Return key to open the folder that contains the diagnostics file.