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. Access the login via page via Safari, by using terminal 

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

Option 2. 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.

The below listed workarounds are for advanced users only:
(Ensure you have read the 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. 

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. 

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: 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.