nmcli Cheatsheet: Manage Wi-Fi From the Terminal

This nmcli cheatsheet puts the scan-and-connect pair right at the top, because that is why most people land here: a box with no desktop, the Wi-Fi dropped, and you need it back. Copy it, swap the SSID, you are online. nmcli is the command-line face of NetworkManager, the thing already managing your connections on basically every modern distro, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian with a desktop. So this is not some extra tool to install. It is already there, waiting. Below: scan nearby Wi-Fi, join a network, list saved profiles, flip connections up and down, check device status, toggle the radio, set a static wired IP, and read or set the hostname.

You're on a box with no desktop, the Wi-Fi dropped, and you need it back. That's why most people land here, so the scan-and-connect pair is right at the top. Copy it, swap the SSID, you're online. nmcli is the command-line face of NetworkManager, which is the thing already managing your connections on basically every modern distro. Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian with a desktop, they all run it. So this isn't some extra tool to install. It's already there, waiting.

Quick orientation, because the wording trips people. nmcli talks about two different things: devices (the actual hardware, your wlan0 or eth0) and connections (saved profiles with passwords, IPs, all of it). A device is the radio. A connection is the memory of a network. Once that split clicks, half the commands stop looking arbitrary.

Scan and connect to Wi-Fi (the reason you're here)

Two commands, and you're back online. First you scan, then you connect to whatever you saw. nmcli device wifi list triggers a fresh scan and dumps a table: SSID, signal strength, the security type, which one you're on. Then you connect by name. NetworkManager remembers it after, so next boot it just reconnects on its own without you typing a thing.

The quotes matter, and here's the gotcha that gets everyone at least once. If your network is called My Home 5G, then nmcli device wifi connect My Home 5G password ... falls apart, because the shell hands nmcli three separate words and it has no clue which one is the SSID. Wrap it: "My Home 5G". Same goes for a password with a space or a $ or a ! in it. Quote both, always, and you skip a whole category of confusing failures.

See your saved connections

NetworkManager keeps a profile for every network you've ever joined, plus your wired ones. nmcli connection show lists them all by name, with the type and the device each one's bound to. This is your inventory. When you want to reconnect to something, this is where you find the exact name to feed the next command.

That last form is a wall of output, hundreds of lines, but it's where the truth lives when a connection misbehaves. Want to know which DNS server a profile actually hands out, or whether it's set to DHCP or static? It's all in there. I pipe it through grep most days rather than reading the whole thing, life's short.

Bring connections up and down

Once a profile exists, you don't rescan or retype a password to use it. You just bring it up by name. up activates a saved connection, down deactivates it. This is the clean way to hop between, say, a wired profile and a Wi-Fi one, or to bounce a connection that's gone sideways without rebooting the whole machine.

There's a real difference between connection down and device disconnect, and it bites people. Bring a connection down and NetworkManager may happily bring up another autoconnect profile in its place, so the device stays online on something else. device disconnect is the firmer "stop, stay off" for that specific piece of hardware. When you genuinely want the interface dark, disconnect the device.

Check device status

Before you debug anything, look at what your hardware's even doing. nmcli device status is the one-line-per-device overview: every interface, its type, whether it's connected, disconnected or unmanaged, and which connection it's riding. It's the first thing I run when something's off, because half the time the answer is right there. The device says unmanaged, or it's sitting disconnected, and now you know where to aim.

If a device shows up as unmanaged, NetworkManager is deliberately keeping its hands off it, usually because something else (like a static config in /etc/network/interfaces, or netplan pointing elsewhere) claimed it first. That's not a bug to fight blindly. It means two systems both think they own the interface, and you get to pick one.

My take: on a headless server, nmcli beats hand-editing config files. I used to edit /etc/netplan/*.yaml or the old interfaces file by hand and then pray on reboot. Sometimes the box came back. Sometimes it came back with no network and I was stuck driving to the data center, or worse, begging someone for KVM access. nmcli changed how I feel about this. It validates as you go, applies a change live, and if a profile's wrong you fix it in place over the connection you're still on. No reboot roulette. The honest caveat: if your distro manages the network with plain netplan or systemd-networkd and NetworkManager isn't even in charge, then nmcli isn't your tool and forcing it just adds a second cook to the kitchen. Check who's driving first, with nmcli device status, then commit to one. I might lean on it harder than is strictly wise, but I've been burned by silent reboots enough times to trust the live-apply approach.

Toggle the Wi-Fi radio

Sometimes nothing shows up in a scan because the radio itself is off, software-killed or just disabled. nmcli radio wifi controls that switch directly, no GUI toggle hunting. When device wifi list comes back empty and you swear there's a network there, this is the first thing to check.

One thing this won't override: a hardware kill switch. If your laptop has a physical Wi-Fi toggle or an Fn key combo that flipped it off, nmcli radio wifi on can't undo that from software. The command reports the radio as still blocked and there's nothing it can do about the lever. Flip the physical switch, then try again.

Add a wired profile and set a static IP

Servers usually want a fixed address, not whatever DHCP feels like handing out. With nmcli you create a profile, then modify it to use a manual IPv4 address. The two-step reads a little verbose, but every piece is explicit, which on a remote box is exactly what you want. Nothing happening by magic.

The step everyone forgets is ipv4.method manual. You can set a beautiful static address with ipv4.addresses, but if the method's still auto, DHCP keeps overriding you and you're left wondering why your "static" IP keeps drifting. Set the addresses, set the method to manual, then bring it up. To go back to DHCP later, it's just ipv4.method auto. Or rather, set the method to auto and clear the old addresses if you want it truly clean.

Show or set the hostname

NetworkManager handles the system hostname too, which is a little surprising the first time. nmcli general hostname with no argument prints the current one. Hand it a name and it sets it, persistently, no separate hostnamectl dance required.

Small thing, genuinely useful when you're spinning up a fresh box and three terminals all say localhost and you can't tell which is which. Name them and the prompts stop lying to you.

Where to go from here

That's the working set. Scan, connect, list profiles, up and down, device status, the radio toggle, a static wired IP, and the hostname. Honestly that covers nearly everything I touch with nmcli in a normal week, and the rare oddity I look up in man nmcli like everyone else.

Sources

• man nmcli: the nmcli(1) manual page
• NetworkManager docs: the nmcli reference

Frequently asked questions