macOS get SSID changes?

Question

ehemmete OP

Created Jun ’23

Replies 29

Boosts 2

Views 5.2k

Participants 13

I've had a little personal utility running for several versions of macOS that uses

let client = CWWiFiClient.shared()
if let ssid_name = client.interface()?.ssid()

to get the current SSID name and prints it (along with a bunch of other active network details.

With the most recent Sonoma Beta 2 and Xcode beta 2, this always returns nil. Doing the same thing in a playground works as expected.
Is this a purposeful change or a bug I should file?

Answered by DTS Engineer in 758611022

I asked the CoreWLAN folks about this, and it looks like this was a deliberate change: Accessing the ssid property now requires the location privilege (r. 108641482).

We called this out in the header doc comments, where <CoreWLAN/CWInterface.h> now says:

SSID information is not available unless Location Services is enabled and the user has authorized the calling app to use location services.

I’d appreciate you filing a bug requested that the official docs be updated with that info.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Boost

Answer 1

ajdali OP

Mar ’24

@eskimo @stenya Revisiting this after Sonoma 14.4 released: Now our workaround to call a bash script from the launchd daemon/agent is no longer working in Sonoma as well /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I | awk '/ SSID/ {print $2}'

I have configured the Launch Agent with the Location Services prompt, and accepted it. Still calling the Apple CoreWLan APIs do not get me any Wifi ssid information that I need. Do we have any certified reccomendation from Apple on how to proceed?

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Answer 2

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Mar ’24

My general advice is to not use a command-line tool when there’s an API equivalent. And doubly so when the command-line tool is buried deep in a framework rather than being on the default shell path.

Still calling the Apple CoreWLAN APIs do not get me any Wifi ssid information that I need.

Let’s start with some fundamentals:

Package your agent in an app-like wrapper.
Make sure it has a reasonable bundle ID.
Sign it with a stable code signing identity, like Apple Development.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

0

Answer 3

fsauter OP

Mar ’24

Just FYI: I reported a related issue using the feedback assistant and as of build 23E214,21T216 my issue is fixed. Maybe this helps!

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Answer 4

dnlblack OP

May ’24

The Sonoma update got me too.

I found that in terminal

networksetup getairportnetwork en0

will display the SSID as

Current Network: SSID

and in Python

import subprocess

wifi = subprocess.check_output(['networksetup', 'getairportnetwork', 'en0']).decode('utf-8') will return a string containing the SSID

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