How to Fix Safari HTTPS Error on Bose Soundbar to Connect to WiFi

by Rian

Some older IoT devices had quirky ways to connect to WiFi. My Bose Soundbar 700 and several others from era (e.g. label printers) have dedicated web UI that are only for connecting to a home WiFi during initial setup. The solution would have worked, if the modern browsers weren’t mandating HTTPS even on the LAN.

While I was reconnecting my Bose Soundbar to a new SSID, — one without spaces and special characters — Bose prompted for a web UI for a password. The actual error displayed was something akin to: “Navigation failed because the request was for an HTTP URL with HTTPS-Only enabled”. The URL given by the app was based off of local IP address.

I didn’t want my fix to be actually turning off the HTTPS exclusivity setting. Reconnecting to WiFi rarely happens, and most modern devices have a way to setup without connecting to the said device via AP mode. On Safari, if the URL is written in IP address, simply adding http:// as the address will force the browser to connect. For example, if the URL was 192.168.2.0/[someLink], make it http://192.168.2.0/[someLink].

Again, more modern IoT devices have more elegant solutions to the problem: Bluetooth, NFC, and so on. The last time I’ve seen a web UI to connect to a router was an old wireless label printer I had.