How can I turn off wifi on thinkpad T460s?

Question

I have a T460s which has no physical switch for turning off the wifi, eg to save battery or when on airplanes. The F8 key seems to have a relevant icon, but it seems to have no effect. Other F keys do work, such as for changing the brightness or volume. I don't have Windows installed on the machine, only Ubuntu Mate 16.04. How can I turn off the wifi?

Solution

In a terminal run

nmcli radio wifi off

When you want to turn it back on:

nmcli radio wifi on

As mentioned in a comment by LiveWireBT (thanks!) you can use the commands in custom keyboard shortcuts:

Go into the menu to set custom keyboard shortcuts

and add a new one for each nmcli command. Click where is says "disabled" and press the key combination you want to use (for example, super+alt+W)

Comments

[Csabi Vidó]

F8 works just find on my T560 with 16.04/16.10. Is it an Intel Wifi card like mine or something else (non-Intel wifi has also been an option on some models).

[user2777045]

04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8260 (rev 3a)

[Csabi Vidó]

If that doesn't require root privileges one can make a custom keybinding in the keyboard menu or with xbindkeys. I for example added shift and ctrl modifiers to brightness up and down keys to have xbacklight work along the other keys in small and normal steps, but that's a different story. :)

[Zanna]

@LiveWireBT good point! Yes, the nice thing about nmcli is it allows all users to control networking devices. I do that with xbacklight too since the Fn brightness keys don't work for me

[user2777045]

Is nmcli any different than going to the network managed and unchceking the box enable wi-fi? Does that actually shut down the device?

[Zanna]

@user2777045 It is the same as unchecking the box - it's the software on/off switch and I guess you don't have a hardware on/off switch, unless you have an option in BIOS/UEFI firmware settings?