Instant Hotspot / Personal Hotspot Not Functioning Correctly

I’m hope in the final solution by Apple… this is very annoying from my point of view 😠

Tim's steps did not fix my 2014 Macbook Pro or my 2013 iMac. None of my Yosemite devices can start instant hotspot on iPhone 6 Plus or my TMobile iPad Mini 2 Retina. The iPhone and iPad can enable each other's instant hotspot fine.

It is clearly a bug with Yosemite. Shoddy quality from Apple.

Tim's steps didn't work for me, but through trial and error, I've found a way that does. From what I can tell, it's a device registration issue... Doing the following seems to force iCloud to re-register the devices. I'll let you all know if this solution stops working.

1. Remove iCloud from iPhone

2. Change iPhone Name

3. Restart iPhone

4. Sign into iCloud on iPhone

5. Remove iCloud from Computer

6. Restart Computer

7. Sign into iCloud from Computer

8. Turn on Personal Hotspot on iPhone

9. Connect to iPhone WiFi

10. Keep connection active for ~5 minutes

11. Once iPhone appears in Personal Hotspot list under WiFi, disconnect.

12. Turn off Personal Hotspot on iPhone

13. Check list of available WiFi signals on computer. If phone shows up under Personal Hotspot, connect.

If you change the iPhone's name, it seems to break Personal Hotspot, so. Don't do that. 😝 Let me know if this works for you!

I had my 2 iPhones (iPhone 6 and iPhone 5S) working as expected after I did Tim's steps as I mentioned before but I need to add my son's and my wife's iPad, in addition as a test, I tried to add my Imac and macbook pro (both on yosemite) . I found that definitely the key of this process is that the device that has the hotspot (in my case this could be potentiality 4 devices but I'm using my iPhone 6) MUST be the last one to rejoin the iCloud after the rest of the devices have been log out. I'm not sure that if it's necessary to change the name of the devices and reset the networks config (since I did this on the mobiles but not in the iMac and the Macbook pro).

A final note, sometimes the hotspot show up right away but other times you will need to be patient.

I hope that this will help

Fred

i have an iphone 6 and an ipad mini non retina. for me the situation is really bizarre. instant personal hotspot requires the ios device to be connected to the same wifi network as the mac is. it is the case, however, unless bluetooth is turned On on the concerned devices I am truing to connect, it doesn't appear under personal hotspot in the wifi menu!

after turning bluetooth On when I do try to connect, it 'Fails to connect' telling me that either tethering might not be supported or the device is out of range, both false!

i tried resetting the network settings on both devices and ended up unable to use the hotspot link between m iPhone 5 & my iPad mini. I did another reset of network settings and managed to get tethering working between each but since then, the new personal hotspots (iOS 8.1) seems to be a hit or a miss. Sometimes the new personal hotspots shows in the wifi menu and, most of the time, the old wifi connection appears. It looks like it's a bug that Apple needs to fix along with the Mail message counter — it shows unread emai when all have been read — and other strange crashes. I've also found the words offered up with the Apple keyboard can be gobbledygook and ones that were not made up by myself. Come on Apple, get this sorted as it's not what we expect from you.

PS: I did find that the new persona hotspots worked better if Bluetooth was on on both devices. Give that a try.

out of the blue, it started working for me! i think this is an intermittent software issue either with yosemite or ios 8.1. since it started working for me on both devices at once, i think its as issue with yosemite.

here's some more information that might help:

3. Make sure both wifi and Bluetooth are enabled

You'll need to make sure you have wifi and Bluetooth enabled on both your Mac and your iPhone or iPad in order for Instant Hotspot to work. So be sure both are enabled on all your devices before moving on any further. If they are and you still can't get a connection, continue on.

&

http://www.imore.com/how-fix-connection-issues-instant-hotspot-ios-81-and-os-x-y osemite

I'm happy to inform you all that Tim's solution worked for me.

That's good for you but not for all us... I'm still waiting for an official solution by Apple

This fixed the hotspot problems for me AND the handoff problems. I did all the stuff that was suggested in this thread nothing helped.

I noticed that one of my apps needed constantly by keychain to open. The Login keychain is opened when you are logged.

BUT the keychain get faulty when you change the login account password, this is what you need to do when enabling and disabling ICLOUD!!

So fixed my key-chain access for this app and.... AUTOMAGICLY my HOTSPOTS (ipad and iphone) and HANDOFF were fixed too!!!

This is what I did.

1. Open Keychain Access.
2. From the Edit menu, choose Change Password for Keychain "login."
3. Type the former password of the account that you are currently logged in to, then click OK.
4. If you entered the correct password, a new window appears; enter the original password again in the Current Password field.
5. In the New Password field, type the password that matches your current account password.
6. Re-enter the newer password in the Verify field, then click OK.
7. REBOOT!!

This fixed my NOTIFYR app, Handoff AND instant hotspot....

Good LUCK

I tried Tim's step-by-step then tried MarcOjanssen's Keychain Access solution and the Personal Hotspot pairing worked smoothly! Thanks to Tim and MarcO!

I've tried all the suggestions on this thread, including MarcOjanssen's. Still not working for me.

I notice that I am able to establish Instant Hotspot immediately after I restart my iPhone 6 and iPhone 5S. Momentarily later, if I want to do it again, it will fail. It will work again after I reboot the iOS device.

It's hard to say which is fault.. Yosemite or iOS 8.1

All we can do is to reboot and wait for the update fix...

Does that method work for you?