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I understand that I can prevent my computer from connecting to networks automatically under System Preferences > Network > Advanced, but I want to not even be able to see networks other than ones I have specified.

I don't want to see this long list:

enter image description here

3 Answers 3

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You can’t really prevent other networks from announcing themselves so until and unless Apple adds a filter, you can just join the networks you care about and save them in the keychain and try to avoid looking at the list.

The filter would be a check mark or other item to only show “trusted” networks so you can choose amongst them and not all of the networks.

To learn more why these are showing - go grab the lite version of WiFi Explorer - https://www.adriangranados.com/ - I use the paid versions for work, but most of what you need to understand how far from these devices you’d need to move to not see their advertisements is in the free version (or using the airport command line interface)

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    And, there’s always the mountains and country-side when you need to get away from your neighbors.
    – bmike
    Aug 24, 2019 at 15:06
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You can’t because the functionality you are using is actually a scanner for available networks. So if you’re clicking it you are scanning for networks and you’re going to get a list of networks as a result.

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You can't set which wifi's are shown but you can set it up so that you automatically connect to your network by using the Network panel in the System Preferences. If you open the Network panel in System Preferences you get the option shown below.

enter image description here

Be sure to unlock the panel if you wish to make changes.

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    Wow - what Mac has an Internal Modem and can also run modern macOS (is that Yosemite?)
    – Dai
    Aug 25, 2019 at 22:40

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