Now that you have the Wifi app in an easy to find location, using it is slightly different depending on your OS X version.

Locate “Wi-Fi Diagnostics” (or “Wireless Diagnostics”, depending on OS X version) and drag and drop it into Launchpad or the OS X Dock for easy access.

From any Finder window, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the path: /System/Library/CoreServices/.

Making Wi-Fi Diagnostics Easier to Access in OS Xįor other versions of OS X, like OS X Mountain Lion, you’ll want to make the Wi-Fi Diagnostics app readily available by bringing it to LaunchPad or the Dock, to do that: This is obviously much easier in modern versions of Mac system software, but don’t worry if you’re not on OS X Yosemite, you can still access and use these tools with the directions below. This will open the wireless card to detect all possible nearby wifi networks, effectively stumbling onto available wireless routers and discovering details about those networks.Īll available wireless network names, SSID, channels, band, network protocol (wireless n, g, b, etc), the network security type, the network signal strength, and the network noise level of the signal discovered will be listed by the scan utility.

Within the Scanner tool, click on the Scan button to scan for available networks.

Go to the “Window” menu and choose “Scan” to immediately open the Wi-Fi Stumbler tool built into Mac OS X.

Now that you’re in Wireless Diagnostics, here’s how to use the Scanner: Scanning for Wi-Fi Networks with the Mac Wireless Diagnostics Tool This is somewhat hidden, but still much easier than accessing it in prior releases of OS X where the app was basically hidden.

Option+Click on the Wi-Fi menu item in OS X.

In modern versions of Mac OS X like OS X Yosemite, OS X Mavericks, you can get to Wireless Diagnostics from the Wi-Fi menubar item:

Accessing Wireless Diagnostics in Mac OS X

Wifi network analyzer mac