iOS 12 and Instant Hotspot Not Working

For me there is also something weird going in in personal/instant hotspot in iOS 12 (12.1.2 for me) with iphone SE and IPad Pro 9,7.

In iOS 10 it worked perfectly, in iOS 11 I had to try to connect 2-3 times, but it worked and in iOS 12 it is a mess....

So after countless hours to figure personal-instant hotspot issues in iOS 12 I hope to give you also some insights:

In all my successful scenarios I have to switch personal hotspot ON in settings. In IOS 10 and 11 it worked also with OFF when I tried to connect with IPad to Iphone on same Apple ID.

Successful connection with WiFi:

Personal Hotspot ON, Bluetooth OFF on both devices (can be turned on after connection established), Enter Password once on IPad. Works like with every (even non-Apple) WiFi Device.

If I turn on Bluetooth on IPad and Iphone and try to select my Iphone SE in Settings->WiFi on IPad - it is NOT working (unable to start personal hotspot....). It makes no difference if Iphone and IPad is paired or not with Bluetooth.

Successfull connection with Bluetooth:

Pair Iphone and IPad: Turn Personal Hotspot ON on Iphone. If Personal Hotspot is set to OFF I am not able to see the Iphone in Bluetooth device list!

On IPad go to Settings->Bluetooth and select Iphone from “other devices” list. Confirm Pair Dialog on both devices. Then in my case there is always an immediate personal hotspot connection shown on Iphone (the blue bar top of iphone screen), even when IPad is still connected to another WiFi network.

To end this Personal Hotspot connection disable Personal Hotspot on Iphone or go to Settings ->Bluetooth -> Iphone (your iphone name) press (i) -> Disconnect

Now here comes the trick which I just found out by accident: If I want to connect via Bluetooth successfully again I CANNOT select the Iphone in Settings -> WiFi (unable to start personal hotspot....). Instead I have to go to Settings -> Bluetooth -> select Iphone from device list to connect - and the personal hotspot is working! (Personal Hotspot has to be turned ON in Settings to be able to do this)

In this case WiFi on IPad and on Iphone can even switched to OFF! So only Cellular Network and Bluetooth, no WiFi at all. Maybe even less battery drain with Personal Hotspot - but I have to check this out.

If the connection is lost go again to Bluetooth Settings and connect to Iphone.

So in short summary (In my case with Iphone SE and IPad Pro 9,7 and iOS 12.1.2):

• Personal Hotspot has to be turned always ON to make it work.
• For Personal Hotspot with WiFi: Bluetooth has to be turned OFF
• For Personal Hotspot with Bluetooth: I have to pair the devices once and connect to Iphone in Bluetooth Settings and NOT in WiFi Settings! WiFi can even turned off on both devices.

Still a little complicated and cumbersome, but predictable.

I hope this is fixed somehow soon. Any difference in 12.1.3 ?

Also it would be nice to establish a Personal Hotspot connection in Control Center and not in Settings.

Just in case someone has the same problem.

I had the same problem but I didn't want to close the iCloud account on my iPhone because it means rescanning all the photos again. In order to force the iPhone to relogin in iCloud without signing out, I changed the iCloud password using a browser. When I entered the new password on the phone, Instant Hotspot was working again :)

BR

Aitor

My fix was easy,

1- disable Bluetooth, wifi, personal hotspot and cellular Data

2- enable cellular Data then enable personal hotspot, when it asks to enable wifi and Bluetooth or USB choose wifi and Bluetooth

3- connect to the wifi network from the other devices, not to the instant hotspot

thanks

I have an:

iPhone 6s Wi-Fi/Cellular

iPad Pro 9.7 Wi-Fi

I am attempting to use the iPhone as the Hotspot. I cannot get the Instant Hotspot to connect from the iPad with iOS 12.1.4. This was working very will with iOS 10 between these two devices. The iPhone does list in the 'Personal Hotspots' area of the Wi-Fi settings. If I turn the Hotspot on on the iPhone manually then attempt to connect to it from the iPad, I will still get the "Unable to start personal hotspot" failure message. Once I tap the 'Ok' button, the iPad the connects fine.

In checking, handoff is working between the two without the Wi-Fi connection established.

Very frustrating.

Signing out from iCloud and in again in my iPhone (the hotspot) fixed it for me. No reboot needed (but I tried to reboot it later for other issues).

Please be aware it hasn't been a painless process. I had to sign back in iTunes/App Store manually and it has got somehow stuck (this is why I rebooted. The Instant Hotspot was already showing, though), the wallet disabled the credit cards and re-enabling them lost their history.

But at least that seems to have fixed the "share wifi password" as well.

Addition to my last post:

Personal Hotspot with Bluetooth only without WiFi is of course very slow (about 0,3 MBits) so not a serious option. (except for power saving only)

If my Iphone Hotspot is set to Auto-Join, the IPad connects even with Bluetooth turned on.

(Wich is not possible when selecting Hotspot manually as described in post above)

But still: Instant Hotspot still not possible like in IOS 10 or 11.

Personal Hotspot has to turned ON all the time, and even then there are some quirks. Sad.

i facing same issue on my iPad but i got an ideal solution in a video that is here -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9FneZqyqPU

in my case solution #5 worked.

so sad, i faced same issue after my iPhone xs max to iOS 12.1.3 but i found very useful video tutorial on youtube to fix hotspot on my XS Max. https://youtu.be/i9FneZqyqPU

In my case the Instant Hotspot wasn't showing in either my MacBook Pro and iPad. So the culprit was most likely my iPhone, as it was indeed. In your case, @torpidlittle, you may need to sign off and back in iCloud in the iPad as well.

Still iCloud is a bit too delicate for my tastes. For other reasons I tried the same process on my MBP and now the Books app connects to the Book Store but it shows nothing. At least my books and PDF already in iCloud get synched (well, some books - like "iPhone guide for iOS 12.3" - couldn't update from 12.2. then it's got fixed), so I can deal with it. Also some of my contacts lost their portraits.

I have exactly the same problem as you!

I have an:

iPhone 6

iPad Pro 9.7 - Wi-Fi only

Since the first version of iOS 12, I have not managed to make the Instant Hotspot work!

Worked perfectly before...

iPad Pro 9.7 seems to be the culprit!

Very frustrating indeed...

I installed iOS 12.3.1. and I did the same as Michelasso on my iPhone 6(Signing out from iCloud and back in) and I still have the same issue and error message when I try to connect my iPad to my iPhone using "Instant Hotspot".

I'm almost 100% sure that the problem does not come from the iPhone but from the "iPad Pro 9.7" (this particular device).

This worked for me too.

What did the trick for me was:

- disable personal hotspot on iPad

- sign out from iCloud on iPad

- restart iPad

- sign in to iCloud

- enable personal hotspot

Using cellular iPad to get data onto the iPhone when abroad.

What worked for me was to delete a lot of old hotspot passwords that had accumulated over the years in my iCloud account.

I did the following on my Mac and now my phone appears at the top of the Wifi list (not sure which of these steps was the one that actually fixed it):

On a Mac that has iCloud Keychain enabled (so that passwords sync with iCloud):

-Open Network Preferences->Wifi>Advanced..., then delete all old Wifi Hotspot entries (iPhone, XXX's iPhone,...)

-Open the Keychain Access app and delete all iPhone HotSpot passwords from iCloud. (An easy way to do this is to enter iPhone using the search field, but don't just delete everything indiscriminately--you are looking for entries like "XXX's iPhone 6s" which are listed as "Application Password" in the System or iCloud Keychain). It can also be helpful to search on the "Date Modified" column so you can easily see which entries may be ancient.

After I cleared all of these stored passwords, my phone immediately appeared at the top of the Wifi connection list. I don't have an iPad, but I suspect that deleting these passwords from iCloud could help with your situation too.

I think we are talking about different things here.

The problem of this thread is:

Here as video:

IOS 12 - iPad Pro 9.7 - Personal Hotspot Timeout failure - YouTube

It could be a problem of the iPad Pro 9.7. In this thread all people which reported a device, had this iPad.

Do you have Wifi & Bluetooth enabled on all devices?

Instant Hotspot, not Personal Hotspot, is a Continuity feature reliant on Wifi & Bluetooth being on.

See >> Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch - Apple Support