Turn off Wi-Fi when macOS goes to sleep

When I am on a network that’s paid by the hour you want to disable your Wi-Fi when you are not using your mac. To do this I listen for when the mac goes to sleep and disable the Wi-Fi.

1. Install sleepwatcher with homebrew: brew install sleepwatcher
2. I have my scripts living in ~/Developer/scripts (create that folder with mkdir -p ~/Developer/scripts)

3. Create a script at ~/Developer/scripts/sleepscript.sh:

   networksetup -setairportpower Wi-Fi off
   

4. Make your script excutable in your Terminal with chmod +x ~/Developer/scripts/sleepscript.sh
5. Test your script with /usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher --verbose --sleep ~/Developer/scripts/sleepscript.sh --wakeup /path/to/your/wakeupscript

6. Create a Launch Agent at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher.plist:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
   <plist version="1.0">
   <dict>
     <key>Label</key>
     <string>de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher</string>
     <key>ProgramArguments</key>
     <array>
       <string>/usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher</string>
       <string>-V</string>
       <string>-s ~/Developer/scripts/sleepscript.sh</string>
     </array>
     <key>RunAtLoad</key>
     <true/>
     <key>KeepAlive</key>
     <true/>
     <key>StandardOutPath</key>
     <string>~/Developer/scripts/sleepscript-output.log</string>
     <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
     <string>~/Developer/scripts/sleepscript-errors.log</string>
   </dict>
   </plist>
   

   Just save it to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher.plist

   Don’t change -s to --sleep because somehow that didn’t work.

7. Enable and start the Launch Agent launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher.plist
8. Test is while putting your mac to sleep. No luck? Check your logs in ~/Developer/scripts/

Happy coding! – Found a mistake or a typo? Please submit a PR to my GitHub-repo.