Mac Mini Wifi Tips

I have a couple of old Mac Minis that have integrated Broadcom BCM4360 wifi chips. This isn’t the most powerful wifi chip in the world anymore, but it sure is convenient to have it built in and not have to set up an external dongle or run an ethernet cable to wherever I have the machine set up.

Unfortunately, this chip uses proprietary drivers that are not included in the linux kernel or most distros out of the box. I have struggled many times to set up the drivers for this machine and I believe I have finally found a method that works reliably.

Step 1 - Add non-free repos to sources list

Some distros, most notably Debian, will not have non-free software repositories enabled by default. As the Broadcom drivers are proprietary and closed-source, they will be located in these non-free repositories.

Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list and add the appropriate non-free, non-free-firmware, and contrib repos.

e.g. for Debian Trixie:

/etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie main non-free non-free-firmware contrib
...

Afterwards, be sure to run sudo apt update to pull the listings for the new repos.

Step 2 - Install linux headers and Broadcom drivers

Now, run the following command to install linux binaries and headers as well as the Broadcom wireless drivers kernel module:

sudo apt install linux-image-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') broadcom-sta-dkms

A brief explanation of what this command does:

Installs linux binaries and headers; these are needed to compile the kernel module with the Broadcom drivers
Compiles and installs the proprietary Broadcom wireless drivers into a kernel module

You may or may not have to reboot after completing this step. Probably won’t hurt, just to make sure the new module is installed and running properly.

Step 3 - Set up wifi connections

This step can be done with your distro’s system GUI or from the CLI. It’s really up to you.

A simple example of how to use nmcli to scan for and connect to a Wi-Fi network:

nmcli device wifi rescan
nmcli device wifi list

nmcli will present a list of Wi-Fi networks it detected. Find your network in the list and run:

nmcli device wifi connect Your_SSID password P@55W0rd

You should now be connected to the Wi-Fi network using the integrated wireless chip!!

Page last updated: Monday, June 15, 2026 at 04:59:40 PM CDT