I guess you faced the issue ‘Mac Connected to Wi-Fi but No Internet’? So, I was recording one of my courses on udemy when I encountered same issue I noticed my mac is still connected over the the wifi network but for a weird reason the internet was not just going through. Surprisingly, I connected my brother’s phone over the same wifi network and it worked. So, now I know the issue must be from either my mac or from my ISP. Guess what? I guessed right. As usual I ran google search to see if I can find some solution. I found guides that suggests that the issue is possibly from mac update. Unluckily for me that was not the cause in my case.
Then I contacted my MTN Nigeria (My ISP) and they maintained that everything was fine from their end of the spectrum. I had to start trying out some common possible networking cause of disruption of internet resolution, lo and behold, I found out that the issue was actually slow/misconfigured DNS server. My phone through my mobile carrier gave my Mac a bad DNS server. I made a youtube video after resolving this issue to help those who may face this issue in the future to be able to try this method out.
If you don’t like reading you can watch the youtube video on ‘How to Solve Mac Connected to Wi-Fi but No Internet Issue‘ below:
How to Your DNS Server on mac
So, head on to your system settings > network > wifi > then view the wifi details > click on DNS. Now you will find your default DNS server assigned to your mac by your mobile carrier. In my own case I saw something like 192. XXXXXXXX1. The was the dns server ip assigned by my ISP for performing dns lookups and queries. This dns server is in charge of returning the relevant IP of your queries.
Click on the plus Icon and add the google global DNS (8.8.8.8) or the cloudflare dns which is (1.1.1.1). Either one will work provided the issue is a dns server issue. So, I changed to the google global dns and it worked fine for me. Now, you may be asking the difference between the google global DNS, your default ISP DNS, quad9 dns and the cloudflare DNS. let’s see it.
Difference between google, Cloudflare, Quad9 and ISP DNS Server.
The below table is a comparison of the different DNS services and their features.
| Feature | Your ISP's DNS | Google DNS (8.8.8.8) | Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) | Quad9 DNS (9.9.9.9) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🔍 Speed | Can be slow or unreliable | Fast and globally optimized | Extremely fast | Fast, but slightly slower than Google/Cloudflare |
| 🔐 Privacy | Low – can track/log your activity | Logs some data for performance | Focused on privacy – logs almost nothing | Very privacy-focused |
| 🛡️ Security | Basic, if any | Basic filtering | Basic filtering + DNS over HTTPS | Blocks known malicious domains |
| 📦 Content Filtering | None | None | None | Filters out malware and phishing domains |
| 🧠 Smart Features | Often none | None | Offers DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS | Blocks bad sites automatically |
| 👀 Transparency | Not clear what data is collected | Publicly shared data policy | Strong privacy claims | Strict privacy and security focus |
From the table above you can now make decision on the dns server to go with depending on your need and scenario. Pls comment below if this work for you, and if something else worked for you pls publish your answer in our forum or let me know in the comment below so that I can update this article and add it as a possible solution. Thanks