How To PERMANENTLY Disable Private Wi-Fi Address on Apple Watch

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Level 1

49 points

How To PERMANENTLY Disable Private Wi-Fi Address on Apple Watch

I disable Private Wi-Fi Address on my Apple Watch 7, it connects correctly to my Wi-Fi and all is well until I leave the house. When I'm back, the watch does not connect to my Wi-Fi because the Private Wi-Fi Address setting on the watch reverts to ON automatically and I'm using MAC filtering on my router.

Is there a way to force Private Wi-Fi Address to stay OFF on my watch?

(Those of you who need to tell me that I should not use or need not use MAC filtering, please don't)

Apple Watch Series 7

Posted on Jun 19, 2023 01:29 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Jerry_D Author

Level 1

49 points

Jul 11, 2023 10:13 AM in response to LD150

Update: the spoofed address stayed stabled for many days, but has changed now. 😠

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Answer 2

LD150

Level 10

95,815 points

Jun 20, 2023 02:39 AM in response to Jerry_D

BTW, the spoofed address produced by Private Address is stable and (certainly on the iphone) is not randomly generated at each connection. The only way to create a new spoof Mac is to reset network settings. Even forgetting the network preserves the spoof address. The same appears to be true of Watch.

Out of interest is it not possible to filter on that spoof but stable address?

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Answer 3

Jerry_D Author

Level 1

49 points

Jun 23, 2023 05:04 AM in response to LD150

Thanks a million! I was not aware that the spoofed address was that stable but rather thought that a different one was being assigned at each connection. I have now added the spoofed address to my MAC filter and everything works great. Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

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Answer 4

LD150

Level 10

95,815 points

Jun 19, 2023 02:49 PM in response to Jerry_D

Report it as a bug

https://apple.com/feedback

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Answer 5

LD150

Level 10

95,815 points

Jun 19, 2023 03:01 PM in response to Jerry_D

PS it you have not already, go through this

Apple Watch basic diagnostics - Apple Community

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Answer 6

Feb 8, 2024 10:36 PM in response to Jerry_D

On my Apple Watch 6 watchOS 10.3 go to control center. Press and hold WiFi toggle. It will bring up all WiFi it sees, then on your WiFi network swipe it to the left. There should be 3 dots, tap the dots and then the private address on/off should appear. Turn it off.

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