wifi-unredactor

wifi-unredactor is a minimal macOS application designed to retrieve Wi-Fi network information—specifically, the SSID (network name) and BSSID (access point MAC address)—while adhering to macOS's strict privacy requirements. Starting with macOS Sonoma, Apple introduced changes that restrict access to Wi-Fi information from command-line tools (airport, ioreg, networksetup, system_profiler, wdutil) without proper location services permissions.

𝄢 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport
WARNING: The airport command line tool is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
For diagnosing Wi-Fi related issues, use the Wireless Diagnostics app or wdutil command line tool.

𝄢 sudo wdutil info
MAC Address : <redacted> (hw=<redacted>)
SSID        : <redacted>
BSSID       : <redacted>

This project provides a solution by using a lightweight GUI wrapper solely to trigger the location services permission prompt. Once permission is granted, the application is intended to be run via the command line.

Install

𝄢 git clone https://github.com/noperator/wifi-unredactor
𝄢 cd wifi-unredactor
𝄢 ./build-and-install.sh
Compiling wifi-unredactor...
Compilation successful.
Installing wifi-unredactor to /Users/noperator/Applications...
Installation complete. wifi-unredactor is now available in /Users/noperator/Applications

Configure

You'll need to grant location services permission to this application for it to work properly.

1. 𝄢 open ~/Applications/wifi-unredactor.app to trigger the initial prompt for location services permission. Click allow.
2. Navigate to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. If you don't see wifi-unredactor in the list of apps, try refreshing the list by clicking the back button and then clicking back into Location Services. Toggle wifi-unredactor on. (For some reason, clicking allow in step 1 makes this app show up on the list, but in the off position.)

Usage

Now, you can get your precious (B)SSIDs from CLI 🎉

𝄢 ~/Applications/wifi-unredactor.app/Contents/MacOS/wifi-unredactor
{
  "interface" : "en0",
  "ssid" : "BrightSquirrelNet72",
  "bssid" : "4A:3B:1C:D2:E5:F8"
}

Troubleshooting

If you get the error location services denied, make sure you've enabled location services as described in the Configure section.

See also

• https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/732431
• https://github.com/ehemmete/NetworkView