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## What's a [captive portal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_portal)?
It a website that captures your browser when you connect to wifi. You can tell the wifi has a captive portal if when you connect to the wifi and try to navigate to a webpage, you are redirected to a different page, usually asking you to log in or for an access code.
If it's _free_ wifi, you usually have to agree to some terms to continue using it.
<img height=40% width=30% src="captive-starbucks.png" alt="Screen showing Starbucks wifi network captive portal." />
If you've made it this far, you'll need the following to keep going.
### Requirements
- A Mac (or any computer whose [MAC address](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address) you can easily change)
- A way to get your chromecast's MAC address
## tl;dr
If you have your chromecast's MAC address and a computer whose MAC address you can easily change, here's the psudocode:
- [Change computer MAC address](#change-your-computers-MAC-address) to chromecast address
- Connect to wifi with computer
- Disconnect computer from network
- Turn on chromecast
This works because captive portals typically save the MAC address of computers that have completed their handcrafted authentication dance.
**But wait, I don't know my Chromecast's MAC address!!**
## How to get your Chromecast MAC address
There are a few ways to get your Chromecast's MAC address, but probably the easiest is by asking the Chromecast itself.
First, open the Google Home app, which is used to configure a Chromecast. If you've already configured your Chromecast in the past (which is the case for most people), you'll have to tell the Google Home app to "forget" your Chromecast, so you can set it up again, anew.
When you get to the wifi setup menu, click the hamburger menu (three dots in the right corner) to reveal the option to show your MAC address:
<img width=20% height=10% src="chromecast0.png" alt="Screen showing wifi network requires logging in and thus cannot be used by Chromecast." /><img width=20% height=10% src="chromecast1.png" alt="Screen showing wifi network requires logging in and thus cannot be used by Chromecast." />
## How to change your Mac's MAC address
_Run the following commands in Terminal.app; to open terminal, press command-space and type "terminal"_
<a name="change-your-computers-MAC-address"></a>
### Change your computer's MAC address
Change your computer's MAC to that of your chromecast:
_in this case 00:00:00:00:01:4D_
```
sudo ifconfig en0 ether 00:00:00:00:01:4D
```
You'll be prompted for your password. Enter it.
### Success
You can verify your new MAC address with the same command as before: `ifconfig en0| grep ether`
]]>