Continuity in Yosemite - Personal Hotspot doesn't work

Hi, Phantomski.

Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.

Here is a great resource for troubleshooting issues with Personal Hotspot.

iOS: Troubleshooting Personal Hotspot

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2756

Cheers,

Jason H.

Same here... the connection fails every time.

Used to work fine while I was using the Beta version.

I have to use the USB cable now... hopefully they'll fix that soon.

I've been having this same problem since upgrading to Yosemite but it wasn't urgent so I've tinkered occasionally but not sorted it. So today I come to this community to start trying to find answers and lo and behold it's now working??? I read a few threads on the topic, re-paired macbook and phone and voila!

I'm not a naive user and I'm pretty good at working through trouble shooting processes but I have no idea why it's now working when it wasn't before and I had done all the easy things like re-pairing, switching things off and on etc etc.

I don't know what's more worrying and annoying...that it didn't work for all that time...or that it now does and I don't know why!!!

I think I have found a solution (?) to the problem till apple fixes the issue. I have an AT&T cell plan with a iPhone 6, and MBA 13". Here is what I do in short, and all the time it works. No restore of the iPhone or reboots are needed. However, first you need to make sure that the following requirements are met

a. you must have tethering enabled from AT&T

b. if you were connecting to the phone via "regular" hotspot feature (e.g. type in the password to connect to the phone hotspot, and had your MB memorize that hotspot), remove that "remembered" wifi connection from network preferences.

c. Your phone must be paired with your MBA using bluetooth.

now do the following

1. turn on personal hot spot from the phone, and the phone can be in sleep and away from the MBA. Your bluetooth must be turned on in the phone.

2. make sure you are (were) logged into icloud from both devices using the same account

3. from the bluetooth icon/ list of your MBA find your phone and choose "connect to network"

4. Once the bluetooth connection is established (it will show on the icon) and your internet is working, wait a few seconds.

5. Disconnect this bluetooth connection by choosing "Disconnect from network" from the bluetooth icon

6. Immediately after the last step, click on your wifi icon, you should see your phone's wifi available with the battery, LTE etc. info on it, and click on it to connect. If you don't see your phone yet, you may have to hover around the wifi icon a couple of times. Your will see a brief bluetooth activity prior to the connection, and it should connect via wifi with the tethering symbol shown.

7. Remember, if you had completed step b from above, your MBA should not "know" your phone's wifi hotspot, and it will connect using the wifi "without" a password. If you are prompted for a password, you did not follow the steps properly.

of course if you are happy with your connection at step 4, you can always use a bluetooth internet, which is considerably slow but works 🙂

Thanks for writing all that out in such detail. I've done everything you did (as well as other variations of the same steps) and continue to have the same problem. I have a thread going on this problem as well, but yours is better.

I am having the same problem, and have been fiddling for a while - and have performed all of the suggestions short of a restore. iPhone5S, OS X 10.10.2. If I try to connect to my AT&T iPhone's Personal Hotspot (yes, I have the tethering plan) via WiFi by clicking on my phone under "Personal Hotspot" in the WiFi menu, all I can get is a "Failed to Connect" error. The only way to connect is if I can initiate a connection by clicking on my iPhone *IF* it shows up in the list of WiFi hotspots. The only reliable way I have found to get it to show up in the WiFi list is to change the name of my iPhone to something else (not sure what effect doing so has on my iCloud data or backups). This is *really* broken.

One thing to add - in following VuncanFromDC's instructions above, I did not have network connectivity using Bluetooth Only (Step 4) ... key words "And your internet is working". Connection was there, just couldn't ping anything, reach google.com etc. I realized that my "Bluetooth PAN" connection was missing under System Preferences / Network. (Click the "+" sign lower left, then select the "Bluetooth PAN" option for interface then OK to add it). Once that was added, "And your internet is working" was validated by opening a web page, I was able to connect to my Hotspot without entering the password, clicking the link to my iPhone under Hotspot etc. as expected (However, it took several attempts to get it to work, but it worked .... finally).

I am having the same problem as well–except for about 3 months Personal Hotspot usually would work after a few attempts.

So here's the thing. A lot of these fixes sound like a sequence of events that could be having no effect. I'm having the same problem and have to say sometimes one gets a connection through the wifi networks menu. Who knows why the mac connects, who knows why it doesn't. It seems totally random to me. I have an iPhone 5s and 6+ and am having the same problem with both. In short is there an answer yet? Its so annoying when Mac do something like this and don't address it! It was the same with Mavericks. I upgraded and my work flow was completely disrupted because a number of plug ins i relied on stopped working and certain developers had to catch up. What's the answer. I'd say this is a pretty important issue and its been months now of random pain.

If there is an answer please post it.

When I installed an SSD recently I downgraded to Mountain Lion and most everything you'd want aside from Mac nonsense worked fine. I wish I didn't upgrade to Yosemite. I asked a few people if they were having any issues re the upgrade and they said just press the button and do it. All I got for my trouble was an iOS looking UI (yippee, I hope that suits Mac ) and more issues no one needs but i'd say connectivity is a major concern. Is there any "Mac" place or better place one can go to find fixes or ways to get out of problems such as these.

After a lot of attempts like restarts/enable/disable rest of the settings, it had issues then i learned it the hard way.

Then simply turning off wifi of Mackbook worked a always for me. (e.g. switching signals from 802.11g to 802.11ac 🙂 as well as connecting my iphone for hotspot)

I hope this solves it for you too.

After playing around with this a bit I've come to the conclusion that the "Personal Hotspot" section of the WiFi dropdown menu is completely broken. If I go into the WiFi dropdown menu and select "Join Other Network", then "Show Networks", then manually selecting my iPhone hotspot it connects instantly. However, if I then disconnect and then try to reconnect, selecting the connection under the "Personal Hotspot" in the WiFi menu again it will fail to connect.

"Join Other Network" and "Show Networks" in the Wifi menu is the only reliable way I can connect my WiFi personal hotspot on my iPhone.

Ok, after my tinkering, I think I have it. I happen to have two hotspots and got to see another bug in contrast with iOS when testing...

First, if you don't see "Personal Hotspots" in your Mac's Wifi menu...

0) make sure you have an iPhone or iPad, a tethering capable active data plan, and the iOS device is powered On and within 40 ft of your Mac.

1) turn Personal Hotspot to On on either your iPhone or iPad (iOS Device)

2) make sure that both Mac and iPad are using the same primary iCloud account

3) make sure that both Wifi and Bluetooth are on on both iOS device and Mac

4) make sure you are not paired. If the Mac is paired to the iOS device, delete the paring. (remember I have two devices to test with...)

Now, do you have a "Personal Hotspot" menu on your Mac? No? Not finished yet then...

5) Log out of your iCloud account via the System Preferences -> iCloud on your Mac and tell it to delete the associated data (it is in the cloud after all)

6) re-login to your iCloud account via the System Preferences -> iCloud

I bet you have "Personal Hotspots" in your wifi now on your mac... if so go to 10, but if not...

7) make sure your iOS device is not paired to your Mac. This will make the personal hotspot feature fail because it overrides the Personal Hotspot connection feature thus relegating you to using that bluetooth tethering to make your network connection.

Got "Personal Hotspots" in your wifi now on your mac? If so, go to 10. If not, ok, then...

8) log out of your iCloud account on your iOS device from under the Settings > iCloud. Let it delete all the iCloud data. It might take a week (really slow) but do it anyway

9) log back into your iCloud account on your iOS device from under the Settings > iCloud. (it will bring the iCloud data back, no data duplication!!)

I bet you have a "Personal Hotspots" in your wifi now on your mac.. Yes? Ok, not finished yet though...

10) reboot your iOS device

Now try and connect via your "Personal Hotspots" items on your Mac. It should work.

I found that one of my devices (the iPhone ) kicked right in on after step 6 but the other one did not (the iPad ). I had to log out and delete all my iCloud data from the iPad and then re-login to get it to come back. See below as both now are G2G.

If you don't use the Personal Hotspot for a while on your iOS device, it will go into something of a sleep mode. You can turn it back on by selecting it from your Mac. If you manually turn off the hotspot on your iOS device, it is really "off" it seems and stays off until you manually turn it back on

This took me a couple of hours to nail down and document when I should have been working on my iOS app for Veterans healthcare. These sorts of problems not only inconvenience us, Apple's customers and developers, but they impact others due to the cascade effect of wasting our time with things that should have been caught by Apple Q/A. Sometimes those "others" who are impacted are really important people . Not a rant, just reality.

Just throwin in my two cents. I have the same problem when using personal hotspot on iPhone 6. All I do is that after the first attempt fails, which only takes a few seconds, I simply put my computer into sleep mode, wake it up immediately and it connects. Works for me.