Applies to: Sophos Home Premium and Free (Mac) 

Affects Mac OS 10.14

This article addresses a known issue where Mac users are unable sign in to public or guest Wi-Fi Hotspots while using the Sophos Home software. 

We are currently working on a solution for this issue, but can offer the following workarounds until it is resolved.

Workaround Instructions:

Option 1. Attempt to connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot through a different browser other than Safari

1. Make sure Safari is closed.
2. Navigate to a secure site such as https://google.com on another browser other than Safari. There will be a security error which is normal as the computer will not have that certificate.
3. Choose to continue and the Wi-Fi portal page should appear.

Option 2. Access the login page by using terminal (for when Safari is the only browser available)

1. Open Finder. Search for and launch Terminal.
2. Type the following command: open http://google.com
3. This will launch Safari and should display the Wi-Fi login page.

The following workarounds are for advanced users only. Ensure you have read Additional Notes at the bottom of this article.

Option 3. Use a mobile device to determine the URL/IP Address of the Wi-Fi Hotspot login page and add an exception under Sophos Home web protection

1. First you need to determine what is the URL/IP address of the Hotspot login page. The easiest way to do this is to try to connect with a mobile device. Look at the address bar of the browser connecting and note the URL/IP Address
2. Log in your Sophos Home Dashboard and add the URL/IP address noted in step 1 as a Website exception. See Web Exceptions section of the following article: https://support.home.sophos.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005499966-Setting-scan-exceptions

Note: When adding the Web Exception, you should only include the domain or IP address. For example if the URL = https://companyfreewifi.com/login you would add https://companyfreewifi.com leaving out anything after the domain.

Option 4. Use Terminal to determine the URL/IP Address of the Wi-Fi Hotspot login page and add an exception under Sophos Home web protection

1. To determine the URL/IP Address, open Finder and navigate to Applications > Utilities and launch Terminal.
2. Run the following command: sudo tcpdump -vv | grep href* and minimize terminal. Now try to connect to the Wi-Fi login page through a browser. Pop up your terminal window again and you should see the address it attempted to connect to. See example below:
3. Log in your Sophos Home Dashboard and add the URL/IP address noted in step 1 as a Website exception. See Web Exceptions section of the following article: https://support.home.sophos.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005499966-Setting-scan-exceptions

Note: When adding the Web Exception, you should only include the domain or IP address. For example using the URL noted above, we would add http://10.255.0.1:4501

Additional Note: Any web exceptions will only work if the system is connected to the internet.

• If you have only Safari, copy the link from the output in the terminal and run the command open <URL> and it will open in Safari.
• In this example use the command open http://10.255.0.1:4501/index.cgi
• To make it simpler run the command sudo tcpdump -vv | grep href exit the dump using ctrl + c and type open <paste the URL> and hit ENTER or use the same URL in the Safari browser directly.