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Background

Sometimes wifi networks require you to login via a 'captive' webpage that pops up when you try to connect to the network. This is quite common at airports, hotels and cafes.

This usually goes smoothly, but just like all software/hardware, occasionally there's some problem that requires you to close the captive.apple.com window and start again. But, that 'captive.apple.com' window doesn't always reappear when you want it to.

Current workaround

My current strategy is to:

  1. Go Settings -> Wifi -> Click on three dots next to wifi network -> Forget this network. Then reconnect to the network. That often (but not always) prompts the 'captive.apple.com window' to appear.

  2. If that doesn't work after a few attempts I turn wifi off and back on again.

Question

Is there some way to force the 'captive.apple.com' window to re-open for a given wifi network?

Notes

  • happy to use some terminal code if that can do the job.
  • probably safe to assume the desired wifi network is the last one the device attempted to join (in case that's relevant for any reason).
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  • I just copy pasted this in to chatgpt and it says just to put this in the browser http://captive.apple.com. Could it be that simple!? (I hope so! but would dream of relying on an llm). Commented Aug 29, 2024 at 15:08
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    Usually you have to open a browser and try to go somewhere. Captive portals are a problem on every platform, not just Apple. I usually try going to http://si.com, once you find a link that the redirect will force the prompt to pop back up, you stick with it. Commented Aug 29, 2024 at 15:25

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I like to open a URL that neither uses nor redirects nor can be redirected to https://, to never run into caching issues and unclear UI in the browser, which hides the protocol. Unfortunately http://captive.apple.com and http://neverssl.com are meanwhile doing this. I wonder why, maybe to prevent displaying unsecure connection warnings or just because somebody configured the webserver to upgrade to HTTPS and forgot these sepcial URLs. They will still work but might not work instantly in the browser in flakey WiFi networks.

URLs that don't redirect and can't be upgraded to https with valid certificate:

IP only sites, saves DNS query

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