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Personal hotspot issues in iOS 11? (iPhone -> iPad)

EugW

EugW

macrumors P6
Original poster
Jun 18, 2017
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Hi there. Anyone having issues with iOS 11 personal hotspot? I can't seem to link my iPhone 7 Plus (iOS 11 PB4) and iPad Air 2 (iOS 11 PB4) consistently for personal hotspot using WiFi. I can pair them via Bluetooth, but it doesn't seem to work properly. Netflix downloads time out, and surfing doesn't work on the iPad.

I'm wondering if anyone else has this problem.
 
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EugW said:
Hi there. Anyone having issues with iOS 11 personal hotspot? I can't seem to link my iPhone 7 Plus (iOS 11 PB4) and iPad Air 2 (iOS 11 PB4) consistently for personal hotspot using WiFi. I can pair them via Bluetooth, but it doesn't seem to work properly. Netflix downloads time out, and surfing doesn't work on the iPad.

I'm wondering if anyone else has this problem.
Click to expand...
If you are waiting on the connection to happen automatically that is not working in the betas. You will need to turn hotspot on, look for the wifi name and select it on your iPad.
 
gsmornot said:
If you are waiting on the connection to happen automatically that is not working in the betas. You will need to turn hotspot on, look for the wifi name and select it on your iPad.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I already tried that but even then the iPad has problems. It will try to link to the iPhone and then fail.
 
EugW said:
Hi there. Anyone having issues with iOS 11 personal hotspot? I can't seem to link my iPhone 7 Plus (iOS 11 PB4) and iPad Air 2 (iOS 11 PB4) consistently for personal hotspot using WiFi. I can pair them via Bluetooth, but it doesn't seem to work properly. Netflix downloads time out, and surfing doesn't work on the iPad.

I'm wondering if anyone else has this problem.
Click to expand...

I still have the same problem with public beta 9.
 
chunster said:
I still have the same problem with public beta 9.
Click to expand...
This actually works fine for me now in Public Beta 9 / Developer Beta 10.

Both my iPad Air 2 and my iPhone 7 Plus are on this latest beta. I hadn’t tried it on Public Beta 8 but it didn’t work for me on Public Beta 7.
 
You're using the auto iCloud personal hotspot? When my personal hotspot is off, I can't connect my iPhone and iPad. I have to manually turn on personal hotspot.
 
This is still as buggy as hell for me in the GM release. I have a helluva time getting another iOS device to activate the personal hotspot feature on my iPhone 7 Plus. Both iPhones, and my iPad are all on the GM release of iOS 11.
 
cwosigns said:
This is still as buggy as hell for me in the GM release. I have a helluva time getting another iOS device to activate the personal hotspot feature on my iPhone 7 Plus. Both iPhones, and my iPad are all on the GM release of iOS 11.
Click to expand...

Same issue for me through out all the betas and now GM too.
Going to try turning iCloud on and off again iPad and see if that fixes it.

Hopefully don’t have to do a fresh install to get it to work.

Anyone else find a solution yet?
 
I see this too between an iPad Pro 10.5 and an iPhone 6S Plus both running iOS11.0 The iPhone appears as a hotspot in the WiFi menu on the iPad but when selected times out with a:

“Remote Hotspot failure. Unable to Start Personal Hotspot <phone name>”
 
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Just had this issue. iPhone 7, iPad Pro 10.5. Took me a half hour, reboot both devices, turn on personal hotspot and finally connect as WiFi network, not the way the “personal” whatever is supposed to work.

It was working this morning. No idea what changed.

Having trouble with my Bluetooth keyboard too. I wonder if it’s a Bluetooth issue. I turn on the keyboard and it connects, but only a few keys work. Had to forget the keyboard and repair to get it working.
 
I had to reset network settings. I hate it when that is the only solution, because I feel like it defeats the purpose of iCloud saving your Wi-Fi passwords and sharing them among devices.
 
cwosigns said:
I had to reset network settings. I hate it when that is the only solution, because I feel like it defeats the purpose of iCloud saving your Wi-Fi passwords and sharing them among devices.
Click to expand...
Hello,

2 quick questions:

Reset network settings on which device: phone or pad?

And then... how do you do that? :)
 
It’s in general, reset.

My problem was: I had changed the password to my appleid. It needed a log out and back in to fix my issues.
 
mchlwise said:
It’s in general, reset.

My problem was: I had changed the password to my appleid. It needed a log out and back in to fix my issues.
Click to expand...
Actually I hadn’t changed my password, but logging out of iCloud on the device that is my personal hotspot fixed the issue for me as well. Not sure I even needed to reset my network settings.
 
I've had the issue with 6s Plus on 10.3.3. (bought the phone new with 10.3.1, but didn't get a chance to test it before upgrading to 10.3.3.
I had to turn off and turn on hotspot several times before devices would see it, even after a reboot. The Same issue continues with ios 11, just not as frequently.

Guinnesses at apple store suggested that it might be related to my cell service. I called T-Mobile and they told me there is no issue on their end, they had me reset cell service settings and the issue was not resolved.

When i have time ill make an appointment with Apple tech and see if they have an answer. In the meantime, i learned to live with it.
 
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I spend many hours trying to resolve this - none of which worked:

  1. Power cycle phone
  2. Logged out of iCloud on iPhone
  3. Reset Network Settings
None of these worked. Did a complete Erase, Reset and setup as a New iPhone. Now working fine.

In other news, had problems with my S1 Watch after the upgrade to watchOS4. Erased and set that up also and that too is now working fine.

Sad that you need to do this. Reminds me of being a Windows user.
 
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I had the same issue after updating an iPhone 6S Plus and iPad Air to iOS 11, which also persisted after updating both to iOS 11.0.2.

Resetting the Network Settings did not do anything. I had to sign out of iCloud to resold the hotspot issue. Luckily I only had to do it on the iPad.
 
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Also have an iPhone 7+ and was ok until the 11.02 update. Now it cannot connect at all via Personal Hotspot.
 
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Problems here too. From an iPad Pro to the hotspot of my iPhone SE --> fail 80% of the times. Have to turn off connection sharing (on iPhone, obviously) then turn it on again. From there the iPad can connect.
No problem to connect from a mac though...
 
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