So I’m at a Quality Inn outside of Baltimore. Came in last night, checked in at the desk, asked about the WiFi password because the blank for it on the key card envelope had not been filled in.
“Oh it’s automatic, you don’t need a password”.
That conjured up worries because I had problems with a WiFi network at a Super 8 in Virginia last year with that same description. Sure enough, when I open the old laptop, the WiFi icon in the menu bar says I’ve already joined their network but the web browser says nope, I’m not on the internet.
Last year, at the other motel, I called the front desk and they attempted to help me with it but ended up shrugging, “dunno, works for everyone else as far as I know” and I checked out and went to another place farther down the road. This time I had an inspiration and launched Parallels and opened a Windows 10 virtual machine. Opened Brave for Windows. Now I get one of those “accept the conditions and agree to the terms” windows with an OKAY button. And yes, now that I’ve done that, the native MacOS browsers work.
But whatever cobbled-together non-standards-compliant routine they patched together to do all that, it wouldn’t invoke the “yes I agree” window in any of my Mac browsers: Safari, Brave, Chrome, Firefox, nothing. Brave has ad-blockers and Safari has limitations on executing JavaScripts but the others are wide open.
The old waiting room at Penn Station for the Long Island Rail Road had that issue, too. Couldn’t get on the free WiFi on a freaking Mac.
My work computer is a Macbook; for me, it’s about 50/50 on whether I’ll be able to join a hotel or other public wifi that has one of those popup “accept the terms and conditions” windows to join.
On my last trip I had good results with m,u Mac. Only the Super 8s gave me trouble. One I finally got to work, and the other, I just used the McDonalds wifi from across the parking lot. It was stronger!
I don’t use a Mac, so not very helpful, but almost all the hotels I’ve stayed at have had login in pages like you describe. They do have a login still, usually something like and , but they all require you to connect via browser.
There’s a website of sorts that Windows/Microsoft uses to handle Wi-Fi connections that are connected but not open for sending data it’s like www.msftconnect.com
McDonalds WiFi has the same sort of access page that just needs a button press. And one quirk about that wifi connection is that it will only bring up the login page if you’re trying to load a page in http and not https. (Chrome often brings up a page about being redirected as well.)
When their system thinks you are already connected and will not bring up the welcome page, one thing I’ve had success with is to spoof your MAC address (that’s MAC = media access control, not Mackintosh). You can google instructions on how to do this. This just makes it think you are a new user.
But I’m not sure this is the problem you are facing.
The recommendation I saw on a lot of sites is to try to go to captive.apple.com to get it to show the popup. There’s also possibly an app called Captive Portal Assistant—or, at least, there was in Catalina.
I travel for a living and the non-standardization of WiFi is one of the banes of my existence. Let’s see, we have:
McDonalds-style login page that sometimes has to be forced to appear, as previously mentioned
Hotels that depend on using your last name and room number to log on. Only that doesn’t always work because of X reasons in the hotel’s computer system.
Places that have relatively simple WiFi, but they have a password like "W68$%^&*((^$15728738JHKJLjkdjfdk). Really? Are the Russians trying to hack your bagel shop? NSA? North Korea? What?
Then there are the the hotels where you are able to log in, but the moment you put down your device or don’t use it for 30 seconds, it loses the connection. Then you have to do it all over again.
And of course, the places that have done some sort of configuration to their WiFi that doesn’t allow you to download podcasts or certain web sites. Thanks for nothing.
There’s a restaurant near me that I frequent. I’ve told them one of the reasons I go there (besides the food) is the fact that they have simple, easy to use WiFi. I can’t believe this is such a problem.
And the frustrating part of this is that the hotel doesn’t care.
They get to advertise “Free Wi-Fi!” And if you complain, the teenager at the front desk shrugs, says “Yeah, don’t know anything about that” (thinking “Hey, my phone’s working ok without WiFi, good enough for me.”)
Oh, that W68$%^&((^$15728738JHKJLjkdjfdk? Another example of not caring. Hotel management could’ve taken thirty seconds and changed the password from the router’s serial number to “MoosevilleMotel”, but they couldn’t be bothered.
Hotel workers want WiFi to work because it’s one less complaint we have to deal with. My hotel has a 24/7 number to our Wifi providers so we can give that to the guests.
And sometimes it’s the guest’s device that has the issue. But no. Blame us. Sure. We snuck onto your laptop and installed the firewall. You caught us.
Sometimes you launch your browser and try to go to a website, even if the initial launch/home page is blank, that can prompt the browser to launch the WAP’s agreement page.
On my road trips I spend 75-80 nights a year in hotels. I bring my Windows laptop, a Fire tablet, and a Pixel phone. Most of the time I don’t have an issue getting to the WiFi landing/sign-in page, but when I do have a problem, 99% of the time it’s with the laptop. I know it’s not my device because I could get online in the last 3 places I stayed and it will hook up to the Pixel’s hotspot no problem. There’s just something in the way the hotel’s network is configured that won’t let my laptop connect.
I’ve called the hotel provider’s tech support in the past but except in one particular case, they’ve never been able to fix the issue. Generally speaking it’s not worth the time or frustration in dealing with them. Sometimes the WiFi is just lousy and there’s nothing you can do about that. Lucky for me I don’t really need to get online so it’s not a huge deal, I can find someplace with public WiFi the next morning.
I’ve traveled quite a bit this year for work, entirely at hotels in the Hilton system and they use the enter your last name and room number system. Except it seems to need renewal daily so I have to do it repeatedly. And I’d like to use a Chromecast device to watch TV but it’s not capable of doing this process.
And when it’s your firewall it’s still our fault. And when you refuse to connect to the hotel’s WiFi network because “it’s a strange network” that’s our fault too.
Was that a charge or a hold? There is a difference. Most hotels in the US put an incidental hold on your room. It disappears after check out if you don’t charge anything.
As for terrible WiFi, yeah, that’s on the hotel. Your computer issues aren’t.
I bought an Amazon Firestick (that lives in my travel electronics bag) for this very reason. The Chromecast device is very difficult with hotel wifi. The Firestick has a web browser that does bring up the login window for the hotel and is much friendlier to the process.
Hon, my computer connected to your hotel’s WiFi. I ain’t running no goddam firewall, I’m on a Mac and I have bootable backups on external hard drives at home. I admit my primary browser has an industrial-strength ad blocker; that’s why I launched Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. They aren’t my regular browsers so they’re pretty vanilla. Things should JUST WORK with a plain vanilla web browser. They didn’t.
Then I cued up a virtual Windows 10 environment because I collect operating systems. Launched Microsoft Edge. Edge immediately popped up a screen telling me I was at Quality Inn and I was on their WiFi for free and here were the terms of use and did I accept them? I clicked the OKAY button and after that not only could Microsoft Edge within the virtual machine browse properly, but so could the MacOS native version of Brave.
Hence, you’ve got a flung-together half-assed software contraption for trapping for that OKAY click that only invokes properly on Windows browsers. Most likely because you folks didn’t freaking bother beta-testing your piece of shit homegrown OKAY screen with any Macintoshes.
Yeah, I realize you probably aren’t really the IT Dept for Quality Inn of Jessup MD, but since you’re taking this personally you can’t have it both ways.
Realistically we should blame the vendors of the hotel’s WiFi. “IT department of Quality Inn in Jessup MD” is not a thing.
We (consumers/voters) allow unbelievable crap in this space. ISP provided routers? We should push for serious regulation in this area. You cannot expect someone who is good at having a desk manned and wrangling a small crew of cleaners and a maintenance guy to be knowledgeable about IT networking. They are supposed to call a local IT shop and order “WiFi” for the hotel, pay $1k/y and trust that it works. We really need to define what “works” means.
You realize I am relating complaints I have heard and have had to deal with?
And no, don’t blame me for bad WIFi. I’m night audit. Not my job. And before you say anything about well who else do you blame, etc., that would be management. Can I blame you personally for every problem I have with your company? Should I go off on the floor cleaner at Target and blame them for the prices?