Why does my Edimax EW-7811UN USB Wi-Fi adapter work on my Mac Mini (2012) but doesn’t on my MacBook Air (2013)

Question

I’m running macOS High Sierra (10.13.2) my Mac Mini (2012) and MacBook Air (2013) I just purchased an Edimax EW-7811UN USB Wi-Fi adapter to use on my MacBook Air but for some reason—even with the correct drivers installed—the OS doesn’t seem to recognize it.

It’s clearly recognized as a USB device with the correct system report information on the Mac Mini as well as the MacBook Air. But if I install the correct drivers on both systems, it only actually works on my Mac Mini. The MacBook Air? Nope. The driver I am using is the macOS Sierra (10.12) drives I found on the official Edimax website and the “README” shows it as version 1027.4.02042015 which was released on “2016-12-20” which is pretty much a year ago.

Anyone run into this issue before? The USB 3.0 ports on my MacBook Air work 100% fine with other devices. What could be up? Details from my system profiler below:

802.11n WLAN Adapter:

  Product ID:   0x7811
  Vendor ID:    0x7392
  Version:  2.00
  Serial Number:    00e04c000001
  Speed:    Up to 480 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer: Realtek
  Location ID:  0x14100000 / 8
  Current Available (mA):   500
  Current Required (mA):    500
  Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

This is what I see in the menu bar on my MacBook Air when I install the drivers and insert the Edimax EW-7811UN USB Wi-Fi adapter.

Answer 1

Okay, well this was a simpler solution than expected. It turns out that I was snagged “Security & Privacy”… I thought I set it to allow downloaded applications like this?

Anyway, I just went to “System Preferences > Security & Privacy”, looked at the “General” panel and there it was… A prompt asking me if I wanted load software from the developer “Realtek Semiconductor Corp.” Once I allowed that, all was fine!