Using the MacOS airport utility.
Sometimes you need to gather information abouth your current WiFi Connection of you Mac via CLI only (maybe you just have a remote SSH Connection to do so).
With the airport tool, there is a handy utility to perform most of the tasks, that you would normally do via the UI.
You can find that tool in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport. To run it, you need to have elevated access rights (run it with sudo).
Best thing is to create an alias first before using the tool:
alias airport='sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport'Display the WiFi Preferences
philipp@Imotep ~ % airport prefs
AirPort preferences for en0:
DisconnectOnLogout=NO
JoinMode=Strongest
JoinModeFallback=DoNothing
RememberRecentNetworks=YES
RequireAdminIBSS=NO
RequireAdminNetworkChange=NO
RequireAdminPowerToggle=NO
AllowLegacyNetworks=NO
WoWEnabled=NO
Listing all available WiFi Networks
philipp@Imotep ~ % airport -s
Password:
SSID BSSID RSSI CHANNEL HT CC SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)
Network1 24:65:11:d3:bd:85 -88 1,+1 Y -- RSN(PSK/AES/AES)
Network2 ac:22:05:1c:12:4d -83 40 Y -- RSN(PSK/AES/AES)
Home 3c:a6:2f:78:22:cc -80 11 Y DE RSN(PSK/AES/AES)
Home 3c:a6:2f:78:22:cb -78 40 Y DE RSN(PSK/AES/AES)
Vodafone Hotspot ae:22:15:1c:12:6f -77 1 Y EU NONE
Network2 ac:22:05:1c:12:6f -77 1 Y EU RSN(PSK/AES/AES)
Home b8:be:f4:87:2e:b0 -74 6,+1 Y DE RSN(PSK,FT-PSK/AES/AES)
Home b8:be:f4:87:2e:b1 -73 48 Y DE RSN(PSK,FT-PSK/AES/AES)
muenchen.freifunk.net/welt 66:b6:fc:72:c2:28 -51 6 Y DE NONE
muenchen.freifunk.net/welt 9c:c9:eb:4f:a7:91 -59 44 Y DE NONEListing a specific WiFi Network
Use airport -s <SSID>
philipp@Imotep ~ % airport -s Home
SSID BSSID RSSI CHANNEL HT CC SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)
Home 3c:a6:2f:78:22:cc -81 11 Y DE RSN(PSK/AES/AES)
Home 3c:a6:2f:78:22:cb -78 100 Y DE RSN(PSK/AES/AES)
Home b8:be:f4:87:2e:b0 -74 6,+1 Y DE RSN(PSK,FT-PSK/AES/AES)
Home b8:be:f4:87:2e:b1 -69 48 Y DE RSN(PSK,FT-PSK/AES/AES)
Display the Metrics of your current connection
philipp@Imotep ~ % airport -I
agrCtlRSSI: -44
agrExtRSSI: 0
agrCtlNoise: -95
agrExtNoise: 0
state: running
op mode: station
lastTxRate: 144
maxRate: 144
lastAssocStatus: 0
802.11 auth: open
link auth: wpa2-psk
BSSID: e4:c3:2a:dd:36:f8
SSID: Home
MCS: 15
guardInterval: 800
NSS: 2
channel: 9
Get the SSID of the currently connected WiFi
philipp@Imotep ~ % ioreg -l -n AirPortDriver | grep IO80211SSID | sed 's/^.*= "\(.*\)".*$/\1/; s/ /_/g'
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