Ipad Air 2 won't connect to WiFi after iPadOS 13 upgrade

It's fixed! I did a full recovery from iTunes while holding down the Home button (as per https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306)

and when it asked I restored from the iTunes backup I took before upgrading to iPadOS 13. It all worked. Came up running iPadOS 13.1, connected to my WiFi router and all seems to be well now.

Oh boy am I glad I took both an iTunes and an iCloud backup before I started this saga! Paranoia wins again.

First, go into the Settings app, under General > Reset and do a Reset all Network Settings.

If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch won’t connect to a Wi-Fi network - Apple Support

If no joy try Resetting ALL Settings.

IF still NO joy,

Unfortunately,

you may have to do a complete backup of your iPad Air 2 to Apple iCloud and/or iTunes on a computer , erase and setup your iPad as new, re-dowload all your apps from the Purchases section/option of the IOS App Store, and then restore your iPad from the backup you made.

Backing up

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

Erase

How to erase your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

OR

Restore to Factory Settings

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings - Apple Support

Restore from Backup

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup - Apple Support

No other options for your iPad Air 2.

If you feel you cannot handle doing any of this, then you will need to bring your iPad Air into your nearest, “local” Apple Store for their employees to sort and solve your iPad Air issues.

Best of Luck to You!

Until Apple produce a fix, the only solution is to restore the iPasOS operating system either from iTunes or by going to an Apple Store. I did the second because the tablet had never been connected to iTunes it was not recognised. After a system restore I used an updated iPhone to set up the iPad, then downloaded a recent cloud backup and now all seems to be back to normal.

Same for me. Dead iPad, restore as new using my Mac, setup with the help of my iPhone to get all the iCloud settings, restore from iCloud backup (which is done automatically for me every night), allow the needed update for the restore and all is back to normal.

Bad experience, but finally it works.

I would expect a patched OS soon...

This was my experience as well - no wifi connection, and not just settings, pretty much everything was slow and/or crashing. From an earlier post I was led to

https://appletoolbox.com/ios-everything-dfu-recovery-mode/.

I followed the "How-To Enter in DFU mode on iPad..." process, with a restore. After a few hours, all was well, with 13.1 installed and everything working as expected.

> It seems 13.1.1 has solved the wifi with password issue.

No, I don't think 13.1.1 was the solution.

Two days ago upgrading my iPad Air 2 to 13.1 killed it with the same symptoms you and others have reported. But *after* I erased all its content and settings1 I was able to connect to protected wifi networks on iOS13.1. I then restored from my nightly iCloud backup and my iPad was returned to full functionality (still running 13.1)

(This morning I upgraded to 13.1.1 without issue.)

You will have to do what is suggested in this thread. The full directions are in the link below. I know that the link gives directions of what to do when you forget your Passcode, but it works to fix this problem too.

• support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306

Summary

• Start iTunes on your computer
• Power OFF the iPad
• Press-and-hold the HOME button while connecting the iPad to the computer via USB
• Continue to press HOME until the iPad shows the picture in HT204306
• Follow the directions in iTunes

1. The first option is to Upgrade. (This did not work for me. I tried this several times.)
2. The last resort is to Restore. (This will wipe your iPad!)

Good luck.

Had a call with Apple support today.. they looked through all the bug reports and can't see it being fixed in an upcoming release & didn't say many/anyone else had reported similar problems. Weird, since this thread is so active and it says 187 people have this question(!!). Not to mention the people going to the Genius Bar & getting assistance there.

Anyway, since it didn't sound like I'd see a fix anytime soon, I followed the steps to do a reset + restore. It didn't take took long, and my iPad is back up and running without problems. Good job the iCloud backup was from the day before I upgraded to 13.1!

First, go into the Settings app, under General > Reset and do a Reset all Network Settings.

If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch won’t connect to a Wi-Fi network - Apple Support

If no joy try Resetting ALL Settings.

IF still NO joy,

Unfortunately,

you may have to do a complete backup of your iPad Air 2 to Apple iCloud and/or iTunes on a computer , erase and setup your iPad as new, re-dowload all your apps from the Purchases section/option of the IOS App Store, and then restore your iPad from the backup you made.

Backing up

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

Erase

How to erase your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

OR

Restore to Factory Settings

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings - Apple Support

Restore from Backup

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup - Apple Support

No other options for your iPad Air 2.

If you feel you cannot handle doing any of this, then you will need to bring your iPad Air into your nearest, “local” Apple Store for their employees to sort and solve your iPad Air issues.

Best of Luck to You!

To all, like me, who waited until a new iPadOS release, I have some good news for you!

I just updated my iPad Air 2 from iPadOS 13.1.2 with broken WiFi to iPadOS 13.1.3 and the problem was fixed!

I can now connect to password protected WiFi networks and I didn't need to restore my iPad Air 2.

Easiest thing I can recommend for people is head over to the closest Apple Store (since they have an open network) and try updating your iPad.

Good luck!

The link has some extra characters in it. The text of the link works just fine. Here it is again.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306

Here is the text portion only that you can copy-and-paste if the link does not work.

support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306

Follow the directions exactly. Unfortunately, for most of us the "Upgrade" option did not work. We had to choose the "Restore" option eventually. I hope you have a backup.

Good luck.

Thanks David, this helped me as well. While I didn't have an iTunes backup, I did take an iCloud backup just before I installed 13. I was able to restore as new through iTunes and then restore my iCloud backup after connecting to wifi.

All is well!

Same problem here. Updating to iPadOS 13.1 from latest 12.x completed fine. After update though iPad Air 2 won't connect to my previous wifi networks that have a password. I also noticed it no longer recognised the screen time passcode.

Note: I have an iCloud backup but not backups to iTunes app on the Mac.

All the suggested methods like router reboot, Reset Networking Settings, Reset All Settings didn't solve the problems. Then I connected the iPad to my Mac and tried to reinstall iPadOS as per this article https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201263. The restore completed but the issues remained. Impossible to connect to my wifi with a password.

So I decided I would do an Erase All Content and Settings as last resort.

To reset the iPad to factory, it needs internet connection in order to verify Apple ID (at this stage my iPad still has my Apple ID in it).

Solution in my case was:

* set up a guest wifi network on my router without password and visible network id

* iPad was able to connect to the internet via this guest network that doesn't require password

* I was able to do an Erase All Content and Settings

Reset completed successfully and the iPad displayed "Hello..." like out of the box. On the screen "Choose a Wi-Fi network" I picked the wifi on my router that has a password. Interestingly the connection happened right away! On the screen "Apps and Data" I picked "Don't transfer data". I was able to log in with my Apple ID and complete the setup process. This iPad is now like a new one.

Checking under software I notice the iPadOS version is now 13.1.1 (previously it showed 13.1).

It seems 13.1.1 has solved the wifi with password issue.

If your iPad has version 13.1, the solution without resetting the device would be to configure a wifi network on your router that has a visible network ID and doesn't require password. This will allow your iPad to connect to the internet and get the update to 13.1.1. Once updated, deactivate the wifi network without password.

Good luck!

All the resetting of routers, rebooting the iPad, and what not was a waste of time. This is clearly a bug in upgrading to iOS 13 and the fix is to recover the device with iTunes: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201263

I decided to just do a clean restore, which clears years of kruft anyway.

Mine took a while, but did upgrade to 13.1.1 on Saturday .. as discussed, it didn't fix the problem, but it didn't make it worse for me.

Raised all this with Apple support this morning, they recommended "using iTunes to use recovery mode which will remove the software and will put back a brand new software back on the ipad". I asked whether this would wipe any settings + user data, and they said not.

It's not something I've done before, so is this something anyone else is familiar with?

I asked a number of times whether Apple software engineering know about the problem, and they've arranged me a call-back to talk to them Friday. I want to make sure their developers are aware of the issues on the iPad Air 2 so that I don't have to end up talking my parent through this remotely ;)