Here Is a Decent Wi-Fi Adapter That Will Fix the Wi-Fi Problem on Your Mac.
If you’ve ever had a Mac with a Wi-Fi hardware problem, then you know that trying to use a USB dongle to fix your Wi-Fi has been fun for a long time. This is especially true for the last two versions of macOS. Fortunately, Edimax has released an adapter that not only works on current and previous operating systems, but may work in the future as well.
Adapter – Edimax Dual Band AC1200 . It costs $ 25 (at the time of writing on Amazon, it’s $ 20). As an adapter it is normal. It supports 802.11n and 802.11ac, has speeds up to 866Mbps, and packs a host of modern Wi-Fi technologies under its tiny hood. Works with Linux and Windows. What’s nice here is that it also works with macOS, including Sierra and El Capitan.
I’m sure out of the millions of other Wi-Fi adapters in the world, there are a few more that actually work with macOS Sierra. But I recently tested a few of them and had no luck until I finally settled on it, so consider this a PSA rather than a “best” recommendation for anyone dealing with this stupid problem.
When it comes to using an adapter, it’s pretty straightforward. As it has long been the case with Wi-Fi and macOS dongles, you need to install the driver and restart your computer to use the dongle. In this case, it also installs a weird utility to manage your Wi-Fi connection, because you can’t do that from Apple’s built-in Wi-Fi utility in the menu bar. However, the driver and application get the job done and are at least slightly simpler than the previous methods, which required running the wireless utility.
I’ve had to use this style of USB adapter for multiple Macs over the years, if not for myself, but for troubleshooting MacBooks broken by other people. I don’t know why, but all my friends seem to have had problems with the built-in Wi-Fi on the MacBook after a few years. For some reason, using a third-party USB dongle on Apple laptops has been problematic for a long time and often required a weird workaround due to driver issues. While you still have to deal with installing third-party drivers, the Edimax Dual Band AC1200 isn’t nearly as annoying as the previous solutions. The software makes sense to use, works reasonably well, and most importantly, it can dramatically improve Wi-Fi connections on older Macs.