With NetworkManger, if you want to connect to WiFi, instead of going to /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml and dealing with this mess:
network:
version: 2
wifis:
wlan0:
optional: true
access-points:
"wifi-name":
password: "password"
dhcp4: true
(If you don’t already have it set up, go here to do it)
You can go ahead and type:
nmcli dev wifi list
With that, you’ll now see all the WiFi access points available in your area and connect to them!
From the list of access points you’ll want to pick one and replace network-ssid with its name and actual-password with its password in the line below and then run it in your terminal:
sudo nmcli dev wifi connect network-ssid password actual-password
If there’s not password just type:
sudo nmcli dev wifi connect network-ssid
Now you should be connected!
Run nmcli d again to double check. It should say that you’re connected.
For some reason, when you have already used NetworkManager to connect to a WiFi network, it clears the WiFi access points that it has scanned. So when you try to run a sudo nmcli dev wifi connect with all the right info put in, it acts like it doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
To get around this you just need to have it rescan for access points again. You can do that by inputting this:
sudo nmcli device wifi rescan
Now you can go ahead and do sudo nmcli dev wifi connect with your access point of choice if you already know the networks around you or you can do nmcli dev wifi list if you want to connect to one you don’t already know off the top of your head.