How do I connect to Instant Hotspot with my Mac? You'll need to adjust some setting on your iPhone first!
Instant Hotspot is part of Continuity, and lets you share the data connection from your iPhone or cellular iPad with your Mac or other device. It's different from Personal Hotspot, which requires a password and connects like a standard Wi-Fi router, in that it uses your Apple ID for authentication, Bluetooth Low Energy (BT LE) for rapid connection, and Wi-Fi for data transfer. So it's much faster and more convenient, but it's really only meant for your devices.
Instant Hotspot requirements
Instant Hotspot broadcasts availability using Bluetooth Low Energy, authenticates by Apple ID , and transfers data using Wi-Fi. In order for Instant Hotspot to work, your iPhone(s), iPad(s), and Macs need to be:
- Signed up on a data plan that includes tethering (cellular device only).
- Running iOS 8 or later on the iPhone or iPad, OS X Yosemite or later on the Mac.
- Equipped with Bluetooth LE (2012 Mac or later, iPhone 5 or later, iPad 4 or later, any iPad mini, iPod touch 5)
- Logged into the same Apple ID on all your devices.
How to enable Instant Hotspot on your iPhone or cellular iPad
- Launch the Settings app from the Home screen of your iPhone or iPad.
- Tap on Personal Hotspot.
- Tap the Personal Hotspot On/Off switch, you want it to be green.
If you don't see Personal Hotspot in the main Settings menu:
- Launch the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap on Cellular.
- Tap on Personal Hotspot.
- Tap the Personal Hotspot On/Off switch, you want it to be green.
If you still don't see Personal Hotspot, make sure your data plan supports tethering.
How to use Instant Hotspot to tether your Mac to your iPhone or cellular iPad
- Click on the Wi-Fi icon in your Mac's menu bar.
- Click on the Device you want to use as a hotspot.
Note: If your device doesn't meet the requirements, or you want to connect to or with someone else's device, you can still use the regular personal hotspot feature by entering in the password.
Any Questions?
Let us know in the comment section below.
Reader comments
How to connect to Instant Hotspot with your Mac
Does this feature require you to have hotspot on your phone plan? Or no?
Magenta is the new Yellow
Depends which network you're with, although it shouldn't really. If a network ever "requires" it to be on the phone plan on Android, you can just download another hotspot app. It's incredibly wrong that phone networks block this feature unless it's included in your plan, I actually switched to another network because of this
Will only stay connected for a few seconds after pairing. Every other issue is correct.
Sent from the iMore App
Something interesting about this vs Android. To run a hotspot on apple, you have to turn on wifi, for android, you have to turn it off.
Apple sees the wifi on/off switch as a reference to the hardware. An iPhone/iPad can run the hotspot over wifi, bluetooth, or while connected to a computer over USB, thereof if you only want to provide it over bluetooth/USB you can turn off wifi, or to limit it to the USB cable turn off USB as well. But if you want hotspot over wifi, then wifi must be on.
It would appear Android treats it's wifi setting as a network source, and since creating a hotspot would make the Android device the network source, then wifi has to be disabled to avoid things like networking loops.
Now, if I could only get LTE bands built into my Macbook...
If all the requirements are met, there is no need to do anything with the iPhone/iPad, as it will already show up in the wifi menu. If some of the requirements are not met then these instructions are required, i.e. not same Apple ID on devices, bluetooth is off or not same version of bluetooth, one or more devices do not meet the minimum OS requirements. Data plan tethering is required no matter what.
To clarify, if you can see Personal Hotspots in the wifi menu, that feature will automatically enable Personal Hotspot on the device being connected to when that device is selected. Manually enabling Personal Hotspot on an iPhone/iPad will make the devices wifi network appear in the wifi menu as any other wifi network.