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Recently, I've been a bit worried about malware, so I've been examining my system and searching for out-of-place applications/programs, and this one stood out.

For one, when looking at the file in Finder, it's called Wi-Fi.app, but when looking at it via the command line, it's called WiFiAgent.app. In other words, in Finder, I see only a "Wi-Fi.app", but on the command line, I see only a "WiFiAgent.app". Moreover, I tried searching for both apps, with neither returning very many results.

What is this app?

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WiFiAgent.app is part of OS X and is the agent responsible for all things Wi-Fi in the GUI.

This includes everything from managing the menu bar item to showing dialogs for entering the wireless key of the network. The agent runs in the background on all Macs with a wireless service.

Here's a converted version of the WiFiAgent.app Localizable.strings which shows some of the features of the agent through the messages that can be localised.

The reason why WiFiAgent.app is shown in Finder as "Wi-Fi.app" is because of the InfoPlist.strings file defining CFBundleDisplayName:

{   CFBundleDisplayName = "Wi-Fi";
    CFBundleName = "WiFiAgent";
}

Contents/Resources/InfoPlist.strings

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    OS X wifi GUI works fine without this agent at all. Plus this Agent constantly slows down wifi network and I had to kill it every time I open macbook. Then it restarts and works fine for some time. Finally I fully stopped it and still can connect to wifi networks, turn off and turn on wifi and etc. I'm not sure what do you mean by "all things Wi-Fi in the GUI". I stopped it by: launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.wifi.WiFiAgent.plist If everything continue to work fine, I will permanently stop this agent from launching.
    – virtustilus
    Commented Nov 4, 2017 at 8:14

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