Fix: Wi-Fi Not Working on Arch Linux (2026 Troubleshooting Guide)
The cruel version of this problem: Wi-Fi worked yesterday. No reinstall, no new hardware — just a lid closed, an update installed, or ten idle minutes, and the networks are gone. When the radio was fine at install time, two suspects explain most of it: a radio someone blocked, or a power-saving feature quietly strangling the card. Both take minutes to check.
Unblock the radio first
rfkill list
Read the output honestly. Soft blocked: yes means software — an airplane-mode keypress, a desktop applet, or a suspend cycle that never cleaned up after itself. One command clears it:
sudo rfkill unblock all
Hard blocked: yes is physical: a slider on the laptop's edge, or the radio disabled in BIOS. No amount of Linux will beat a switch you have not flipped. And if the block is soft but returns after every resume, restart the service that re-detects the card:
sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager
Then interrogate power saving
Card detected, networks listed, but pages crawl or the link drops after idle? Power save is the classic culprit — the radio naps, the first packet has to wake it, and everything after feels like a bad dream:
iw dev wlan0 get power_save
sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off
That reset is temporary. To keep it off through reboots, tell NetworkManager directly — create /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-powersave-off.conf:
[connection]
wifi.powersave = 2
The suspend-resume repeat offender
Wi-Fi fine at boot, dead after every lid-close? MediaTek cards are famous for it. Reload the module by hand to confirm the diagnosis:
sudo modprobe -r mt7921e && sudo modprobe mt7921e
If that revives it, automate it: a tiny systemd unit running those two commands with After=suspend.target turns your five-minute ritual into a non-event. The same pattern works for iwlwifi and Broadcom's wl.
Two smaller gremlins
Only 2.4GHz networks visible? Set your regulatory domain so the radio may legally light up 5GHz:
sudo iw reg set PK
And if an ambitious week left you with two network managers — iwd alongside NetworkManager, say — pick one and disable the other. They argue over the interface, and the interface loses.
A soft block is a five-second fix, and I wish every silence were that cheap. Gaza's journalists keep their transmission alive through blackouts by any means they can find, and keeping a signal going is one of the bravest forms of testimony there is.
Broken connections are our trade too, just with boarding passes: when an airline cancels at midnight before an Islamabad departure, we rebook, reroute and badger the airline's desk until our traveller is moving again. That is the rescue work we do at HTG Travels from Sialkot, at hours the airlines would rather not discuss.
