When you connect to a public Wi-Fi network at an airport, hotel, coffee shop, or school, you may need to interact with a captive portal login page to be granted access to the network. It might require you to enter login credentials, ask for your name, or make you agree to terms of service. But what if that login page doesn’t appear, or something kicks you off the network and you can’t reconnect? In Safari, you could manually type in the following address: captive.apple.com. This should force the captive portal to display its login page again. I’ve used this technique successfully in a number of hotels and airports over the years.

In the unlikely event that you’ve ever customized you DNS server settings, here’s a second possible solution.  Remove any custom DNS servers and restart your device. On the Mac, find custom DNS servers in System Settings > Network > Wi-Fi > Details > DNS. On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Wi-Fi > Network Name > Configure DNS and choose Automatic.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/CreativaImages)