How to add a static route on macOS

Static routes can be very helpful, especially when needing to bypass a VPN. Luckily adding a static route on macOS is fairly simple using the route command. We'll go over how to add a static route temporarily and persistently. 

Temporary Static Route

This static route will be removed upon rebooting your mac. If you want a permanent static route, please see Persistent Static Route.

Replace $destination_ip with the IP address of the destination service. Replace $router_ip with the IP address of your local router. 

sudo route -nv add $destination_ip $router_ip

You can confirm the static route is in place with netstat: 

netstat -rn |grep $destination_ip

For my example, I'm routing google.com directly to my local router:

142.250.190.14       192.168.2.1        UGHS              en5

Removing the route is as simple as:

sudo route -nv delete $destination_ip

Persistent Static Route

Adding a presistent static route will stay in place after reboots. It's only recommended to use this after testing with a temporary route. This setup is a bit more complex. 

1. Verify which interface is currently active. As you'll want to attach the route to the correct device. 
   
   ifconfig -a |grep -B8 'status: active'

   en5: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
       options=404<VLAN_MTU,CHANNEL_IO>
       [..snipped..]
       media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
       status: active

   On my mac, en5 is the active interface.
   
   
2. Determine which network adapter is used for the active interface.
   
   networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder |grep -B1 en5

   (1) AX88179A
   (Hardware Port: AX88179A, Device: en5)

   On my mac, AX88179A is the network adapter in use.
   
   
3. Add the static route persistently: 
   
   sudo networksetup -setadditionalroutes "AX88179A" $destination_ip 255.255.255.0 $router_ip
   
   
4. You can confirm the route is in place with netstat, via grep only search for the first 3 octets of the destation IP.
   
   
5. To remove the perstitent static route, run the same command to add it, with out the IP address information: 
   
   sudo networksetup -setadditionalroutes "AX88179A"