- If Personal Hotspot is not working on your iPhone Air, ensure the internet works and you’re entering the right password.
- You can also try disabling Low Data mode or restarting your phone’s Wi-Fi.
- If your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot still won’t work, then restarting the phone or resetting network settings might help.
Your iPhone Air personal hotspot feature can come in handy in so many ways. For instance, if your home internet is experiencing an outage or if you brought your laptop to a cafe that doesn’t offer Wi-Fi access, you can instead use your cellular data plan to get your other devices online. But you try to connect to it and it won’t work. Why?
This question has many possible answers, and most of them depend on the cause. Here’s how to fix your hotspot problem on iPhone Air.
How to fix your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot when it’s not working
If your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot isn’t working, run through this troubleshooting list to figure out why. Try connecting to Personal Hotspot again after each step.
Make sure your iPhone’s internet connection is working
On your iPhone Air, go to Settings ⇒ Cellular and check to make sure cellular data is switched on. You should also try to use the internet on your phone to make sure you’re not in an area with slow or bad reception.
You should also check and ensure you haven’t exceeded your cellular data limit for the month — if you’re on a prepaid plan with a limit, your data speeds will be throttled when you pass it, rendering your hotspot essentially useless. To solve this issue, contact your data provider.
Note: If you set up your iPhone to use two SIMs, Personal Hotspot uses the line you select for cellular data.
Make Sure Personal Hotspot is set up properly on your iPhone Air
- On your iPhone Air, go to Settings ⇒ Personal Hotspot and check to make sure Allow Others to Join is on.
- Remember the iPhone’s Wi-Fi network name and password that appear on this screen. Optionally, you can change the Wi-Fi Password. Your Wi-Fi network name is your iPhone name, which you can change in Settings ⇒ General ⇒ About.
- Stay on this screen until you connect the other device to your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot.
If you can’t find or turn on Personal Hotspot on your iPhone Air, check that your wireless carrier enabled it and that your wireless plan supports it.
Turn Personal Hotspot on and off on your iPhone Air
- On your iPhone Air, go to Settings ⇒ Personal Hotspot, then turn off Allow Others to Join.
- Wait for about 15 seconds, then turn on Allow Others to Join.
Make sure the password is right
If you see a password error when you try to join Personal Hotspot, look at the password on your iPhone Air and make sure you’ve entered the password correctly on the device you’re connecting with — if it’s not, you won’t be able to connect to your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot.
On your iPhone Air, go to Settings ⇒ Personal Hotspot to see your Personal Hotspot password. If you’re still having trouble, you can also change the password to something that will be easier to enter without mistakes.
Turn your Wi-Fi on and off
Speaking of bugs in the system, even though your phone’s Wi-Fi isn’t usually the victim of them, it’s not impossible for that to be the case.
If it doesn’t seem to be working, try switching it off and back on again and see if that fixes the issue.
- On your iPhone Air, go to Settings and tap Wi-Fi.
- Tap the toggle for Wi-Fi to turn it off.
- Wait about 15 Seconds.
- Tap the toggle for Wi-Fi to turn it on
On the device that needs to connect to your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot, turn Wi-Fi off and back on as well. Please also make sure that you connect to the correct Wi-Fi network. The network name is the same as your iPhone and the Personal Hotspot icon might appear next to it.
Disable Low Data mode
Low Data Mode is an iOS feature that is designed to restrict background network use and save cellular data usage. If the feature is enabled, it could be the reason why your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot is not working. Try turning Low Data mode off and see if that fixes the issue.
- On your iPhone Air, go to Settings and tap Cellular.
- Tap Cellular Data Options, select Data Mode, then turn off Low Data Mode.
Turn on Maximize Compatibility.
On your iPhone Air, go to Settings ⇒ Personal Hotspot and turn on Maximize Compatibility. Then try connecting your devices again to your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot.
Note: When you turn on Maximize Compatibility, internet performance and Wi-Fi security might be reduced for devices connected to the hotspot.
Try restarting your devices
It’s possible the problems you’re experiencing with your hotspot could easily be simply solved by restarting your devices. Restart your iPhone Air and the other device that needs to connect to Personal Hotspot.
Reset Network Settings
On your iPhone Air, go to Settings ⇒ General ⇒ Transfer or Reset iPhone ⇒ Reset, then tap Reset Network Settings. This also resets Wi-Fi networks and passwords, cellular settings, and VPN and APN settings that you’ve used before.
Connect to your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot with Bluetooth
Wi-Fi isn’t the only way to connect devices to your iPhone Air hotspot. You can connect a phone or computer to the Personal Hotspot on your iPhone Air using Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi. Both devices must have Bluetooth turned on.
To connect a device to the Personal Hotspot on your iPhone Air using Bluetooth, follow the steps below:
- On your iPhone Air, go to Settings and tap Bluetooth.
- Tap the toggle for Bluetooth to turn it on – when it’s on, it will have a green background instead of gray.
- Connect to the iPhone Air Bluetooth from your other device, and confirm the connection on your phone.
Connect to your iPhone Air Personal Hotspot with a USB cable
You can also connect a Mac or Windows device to the Personal Hotspot on your iPhone Air using the USB cable that came with your iPhone Air (or another cable that matches the ports on your iPhone Air and other device).
Note: If you see an alert on your iPhone that says Trust This Computer? tap Trust. You may be asked to enter your device passcode to proceed. If you see an alert on your Mac that says “Allow accessory to connect?” click Allow.
As soon as it’s connected by a cable, your Mac or Windows device is able to use the cellular connection on your iPhone Air.
Conclusion
In most cases, this is about all you can do to fix any iPhone Air hotspot issues you might be having. If none of these troubleshooting options can solve your problem, it may be a bug in a software update, or you might need to take your phone in to be looked at.
