wif

A minimal command-line tool for managing WiFi connection on MacOS.

Why?

I love using the command line over GUI any time I can. Prior to creating this tool, I had several clunky shell aliases and functions in my .bashrc.

# So that I could use `wf on` or `wf off`
alias wf="networksetup -setairportpower en1"
# So that I could get the password of a network without Keychain Access
alias nwp="security find-generic-password -wga"
# Other network operations, such as listing
alias airport="/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport"
# To connect to a network; required insecure inputting of network password
function nw {
    (networksetup -setairportnetwork en1 "$@" & 2>/dev/null)
}
# Written just before creating `wif` for more secure network password inputting. Still couldn't save passwords.
function nwpass {
    read -s -p "Password for $1: " pass
    echo
    nw "$1" "$pass"
}

These worked alright, but they were inconsistent. I wanted to capability to save network data to a JSON file or similar. Implementing such a system in bash would be convoluted and likely slow, so I decided to create a unified Python tool for manipulating my WiFi connections.

Installation

From the project directory, run:

make install

for a full installation.

Alternatively, if you're working in a development environment, you may wish to symlink the executable for ease of testing:

make link

To uninstall:

make uninstall

Any of these commands may require root privileges depending on your environment.

Use

Turn WiFi on or off:

wif on
wif off

List available networks:

wif list

Connect to a network:

wif connect -n SSID

You may also use the -p PASSWORD flag, however this is not recommended as it will not prevent the network password from being stored unpredictably in shell history.

License

MIT

Author

Erik Boesen