Why is Bluetooth have to be on for my Hotspot to work?

You're are mistaken. There is no such thing as battery bleeding Bluetooth. Bluetooth uses practically no energy, and there never any reason to turn Bluetooth off. When not connected Bluetooth uses ZERO energy, and when connected it use 10 milliwatts or less. The cellular connection that you are using as the connection for your hotspot uses 500 milliwatts to 1,000 milliwatts, depending on signal strength. The Wi-Fi you are using consumes 30 milliwatts, so the reason the battery drains faster when using the hotspot is the cellular network connection, not Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi.

If you don’t leave Bluetooth on all the time your chance of finding a lost iPhone is pretty close to zero.

I suspect that Bluetooth is the control channel for the hotspot, which is why it must be on. But, as I said, you should leave it on all the time.

Connect to the Personal Hotspot of an iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

The Personal Hotspot uses your cellular data connection as the uplink to the Internet. And, as stated, that cellular connection is the thing that really drains your battery.

According to Apple's Support article, you can use Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or USB to connect local devices to an iPhone which is acting as a Personal Hotspot. But even if you use Wi-Fi, Bluetooth must be turned on. It is reasonable to suppose that in this case, Bluetooth is used only as a control channel.

The method for connecting to a Personal Hotspot with Bluetooth is different from the method for connecting using Bluetooth, so it is very unlikely that you are "accidentally" connecting using Bluetooth when you could be doing so using Wi-Fi. However, even in the scenario where you connect using Bluetooth, it is likely that the cellular radio will be consuming much more battery power than the Bluetooth one. Bluetooth is a "Personal Area Network" - and the signal doesn't have to be strong enough to go very far. For the cellular connection that you must have to create a hotspot, the signal needs to be strong enough to travel all of the way to one of your carrier's cell phone towers.

There is no way to turn off Bluetooth when using the hotspot. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION. And Bluetooth uses no energy. You can believe whatever you want, but that doesn’t change facts. And this isn’t arguing; you can’t argue with facts.

When you are using just Wi-Fi your phone lasts longer, because the cellular radio in the iPhone is not active. When you connect using the hotspot the cellular radio is on continuously, that is why your phone battery drains faster when using the hotspot. It is the cellular connection that is using the energy, not Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

YOU CANNOT TURN OFF BLUETOOTH AND STILL USE TETHERING USING YOUR CELLULAR CONNECTION. IT ISN’T USING BLUETOOTH TO TETHER, IT IS USING BLUETOOTH TO CONTROL THE CONNECTION. YOUR CONNECTION ITSELF IS OVER WI-FI.

If that isn’t clear enough I give up.

Scooby9261 wrote:

Well so far the one thing ive been told is i need to turn off Bluetooth tethering.

You told us that you connected to your hotspot through Wi-Fi.

If that is true, you were not using Bluetooth tethering, and it is pointless to ask how to turn it off. Yes, the Wi-Fi tethering option does require Bluetooth to be enabled, but the bulk of the traffic is going

• Between your M1 MacBook Air and your iPhone – over Wi-Fi
• Between your iPhone and the Internet over your cellular connection - this being the connection which is both absolutely necessary, and the greatest consumer of battery power

If you were doing Bluetooth tethering, you would have connected your MacBook Air to your iPhone via Bluetooth, and your iPhone would not be selected in your MacBook Air's Wi-Fi Settings.

There (going by info i finally found) is an issue with Bluetooth tethering and there use to be a way to shut this off.

What info? You can probably find sources on the Internet to tell you that the Earth is flat and balanced on the back of giant turtles. That doesn't mean that it is.

I'm seeing the same behavior on my end (iPhone w/ iOS 26.5.2, Mac w/ macOS Sequoia 15.7.7). If the iPhone Bluetooth is turned off, the Mac cannot connect to the hotspot. If the iPhone Bluetooth is on, the Mac can connect to the hotspot but drops the connection if the iPhone Bluetooth is turned off.

I believe Bluetooth is the way the 2 devices communicate in the background to know what each device is doing, especially when you want to drop the hotspot from either the Mac or the iPhone.

Scooby9261 wrote:

Just stinks, when im on battery the combo of Wifi and Bluetooth while my phone is in hot spot mode burns the battery quick.

Nah......neither the Bluetooth nor Wifi radios are big consumers of power. But your Hotspot is a big consumer of power.

Re: “… there has got to be a way of turning off bluetooth when using your phone to connect to a computer … “

WiFi Hotspot is a service provided by your wireless carrier.

Perhaps you might take this discussion up w/ them.

Scooby9261 wrote:

Well so far the one thing ive been told is i need to turn off Bluetooth tethering. And so far no one has mentioned how to do this. Id like to try that, before i spend hours of my time on hold. LOL. And i dont think this has anything to do with my provider. There (going by info i finally found) is an issue with Bluetooth tethering and there use to be a way to shut this off. But on the Iphone 14 I cant find the option. This all happened with the latest update from Apple.

Get new trusted sources to base your decisions on. The one who advised you to turn off Bluetooth Tethering hasn't a clue what they are speaking about and they are simply wrong.

I found this thread on StackExchange.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/54317/which-personal-hotspot-mode-uses-least-battery

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/48520/wifi-or-bluetooth-or-usb-for-ipad-tethering/54193#54193

Summary: The posters seemed to think that of the three Personal Hotspot tethering options,

• USB tethering requires "the least power by far"
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi tethering require more power. One poster thought Bluetooth tethering would require less power; another was not sure how the two wireless tethering methods compared for power consumption.
• Bluetooth tethering had "by far" the slowest speeds of all three methods – and also had less range than Wi-Fi tethering.

If you use a USB cable for tethering,, the phone may draw power from your laptop's battery, but, of course, there would still be the drain of running the cellular radio whenever you were sending packets to, or receiving packets from, the Internet.

Well so far the one thing ive been told is i need to turn off Bluetooth tethering.

Well, where in this thread has anyone told you to turn off Bluetooth tethering?