Personal Hotspot not working between MacBook Pro (2018) and iPhone XS

Question

Level 1

13 points

Personal Hotspot not working between MacBook Pro (2018) and iPhone XS

Whilst the MacBook is now running Catalina and the iPhone has been upgraded. This has going on for a while now.

I am attempting to use the Personal Hotspot facilities on my iPhone XS. Using my iPad Pro it sees the personal

hotspot and connects automatically.

With the MBP I can see the hotspot on the list of connections but it will not connect to the hotspot. It is asked if I want to share but it won’t connect. Whilst I haven’t tried the cable approach I have found that the Bluetooth connection works but is slow.

I have tried deleting hots spots and remaking them to no avails. Seeing as I work often away from my office it is a real pain

Has anyone any ideas please

iPhone XS

Posted on Oct 15, 2019 3:08 PM

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Answer 1

PaulNottm Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 22, 2019 1:50 AM in response to ttboy5000

It worked perfectly for a couple of days ( well twice ). Yesterday it took me at least 10 attempts to connect. I tried the Bluetooth connection which did connect but at speeds that made the old telephone modems look like broadband.

I took Norton 360 off the MBP and iPhone a while ago think that may have been an issue. Think I’m going to reinstall on MBP and use the VPN whilst using public hotspots.

When I get a day free I may wipe the disk and reinstall Catalina from scratch - has anyone tried this?

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Answer 2

fjoesne

Level 1

10 points

Oct 23, 2019 9:33 AM in response to PaulNottm

Having issues with my Bluetooth headset when connecting to my phone (11 pro max), as well as hotspot not being activated from the MacBook Pro 2018. This may be some Bluetooth communication issue. Although my MacBook is able to connect to the phone via Bluetooth(it’s listed as connected while attempting to activate the hotspot), it appears that the phone doesn’t understand the request or something. Seems like Apple has become to lazy to do proper beta testing 😤

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Answer 3

deggie

Level 10

167,177 points

Oct 23, 2019 9:40 AM in response to fjoesne

Doubtful, the issue is there are far too many Bluetooth devices with various versions of Bluetooth and even Bluetooth differences within Apple devices. If Apple was to beta test every possible combination of Bluetooth devices the next version of iOS would be released sometime in 2055. Or later.

That said I've got the opposite problem from one person here, I can connect with my MacBook Pro but only after restarting my iPhone. I cannot connect with my iPad Pro. Best thing to do is click on the Contact Support link at the top right of this page and give them all the details about your devices. Then hope a fix is sooner than later.

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