How can I view configured networks in my macOS terminal?

Let’s assume you have multiple networks set up under System Preferences > Networks.

You might have “Work” which has a bunch of proxy configuration specified and “Home” which just disabled proxy configuration.

If you left the former “Work” network selected, then went to a place that can’t access the proxy server, you wouldn’t be able to access the internet and vice versa.

To make automating this a little bit easier, there’s a command line tool called scselect

Here’s an example of what it looks like in action:

> scselect
Defined sets include: (* == current set)
 * <guid> (Work)
   <guid> (Home)

In this example, we can see the Work network is selected.

Now we wanted to change to the Home network, you could do so manually in System Preferences or you can run scselect with the name of the network you want to change to like so:

> scselect Home
CurrentSet updated to <guid> (Home)
> scselect
Defined sets include: (* == current set)
   <guid> (Work)
 * <guid> (Home)

As you can see, the Home network is now selected.

I only recently discovered this tool so I haven’t automated it yet but it’s probably feasible to have a file with your working hours and then if it’s within those hours, toggle on the Work network (and all of the proxy configuration that comes with it)

The reason you might want to use a schedule and not eg; WiFi name is that you might be working from home over a VPN for example.