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Has anyone actually got Instant Hotspot working on the release version of 8.1?

L

lazarusr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 31, 2013
14
2
I can't see any difference in personal hotspot. On Yosemite I do not see battery life, signal strength etc for phone and I cannot connect to the personal hotspot unless it is turned on and I enter the relevant password.

Also, in the official list of features for iOS 8.1 there is no mention of Instant Hotspot.
 
lazarusr said:
I can't see any difference in personal hotspot. On Yosemite I do not see battery life, signal strength etc for phone and I cannot connect to the personal hotspot unless it is turned on and I enter the relevant password.

Also, in the official list of features for iOS 8.1 there is no mention of Instant Hotspot.
Click to expand...

It works for me exactly the same as in ios 8.0. You do have it switched on and a Mac which supports Handoff?
 
hounslowfish said:
It works for me exactly the same as in ios 8.0.
Click to expand...

I don't understand what you mean. Instant Hotspot was not available in iOS 8.0. It was one of the continuity/handoff features that didn't make it through to the release of 8.0, 8.0.1 or 8.0.2.

This is what personal hotspot has always looked like:

wifi.png


This is what the new instant hotspot should look like

os-x-yosemite-instant-hotspot-100309453-medium.png


You can see extra info for the iPhone in question and it is supposed to work even if personal hotspot is turned off.
 
lazarusr said:
I can't see any difference in personal hotspot. On Yosemite I do not see battery life, signal strength etc for phone and I cannot connect to the personal hotspot unless it is turned on and I enter the relevant password.

Also, in the official list of features for iOS 8.1 there is no mention of Instant Hotspot.
Click to expand...

Nope not here. Just started another thread about this issue. For us Personal Hotspot users, we all know how to turn the feature on and how to use it. However, I canʻt seem to figure out Instant Hotspot. Definitely does not look like the online images that show your cellphone battery life and signal strength.
 
I was seeing the bottom image with 10.10 PB6 and iPhone 6 running 8.0.2. Didn't work every time, but it just worked sometimes :D

Oh, it didn't work unless personal hotspot was enabled on the phone. Will try again tomorrow with 10.10 release and 8.1.
 
lazarusr said:
I don't understand what you mean. Instant Hotspot was not available in iOS 8.0. It was one of the continuity/handoff features that didn't make it through to the release of 8.0, 8.0.1 or 8.0.2.

This is what personal hotspot has always looked like:

Image

This is what the new instant hotspot should look like

Image

You can see extra info for the iPhone in question and it is supposed to work even if personal hotspot is turned off.
Click to expand...

That feature worked for me with iOS 8.0! Not sure if it is worth mentioning, but I had achieved handoff on my 2011 MBA by hacking kexts...

I should add that for it to work for me, the iPhone 5s needs to be awake. It does not work when the iPhone is asleep (as Apple claims it ought to).
 
hounslowfish said:
That feature worked for me with iOS 8.0! Not sure if it is worth mentioning, but I had achieved handoff on my 2011 MBA by hacking kexts...

I should add that for it to work for me, the iPhone 5s needs to be awake. It does not work when the iPhone is asleep (as Apple claims it ought to).
Click to expand...

Hacking kexts? No wonder you were able to make it work before 8.1.

Well FYI, now that I have it working, Iʻve observed that Instant Hotspot can be activated whether my iPhone is asleep or not.
 
Is this a free feature for any carrier? Or is this like Personal Hotspot where it depends on your carrier, such as AT&T requires you to have some sort of data package in order to use this?
 
Crazy Badger said:
I was seeing the bottom image with 10.10 PB6 and iPhone 6 running 8.0.2. Didn't work every time, but it just worked sometimes :D

Oh, it didn't work unless personal hotspot was enabled on the phone. Will try again tomorrow with 10.10 release and 8.1.
Click to expand...

Tested again and still working as before. Personal Hotspot needs to be enabled on the iPhone before you can see it on the Mac, and sometimes even though it's enabled on the phone you still can see it without toggling it off and back on.

Don't see how this is any different to how it worked in previous versions of OS X other than the menu item now shows signal strength and battery life.

Update - given this facility is enabled by the carrier, perhaps there are some variations dependant on who is providing your mobile service. For me it's 3 in the UK
 
Last edited:
For me this just worked out of the box. I don't have to have hotspot turned on and even when the phone is sleeping I can still see it as available on my mbp. So many people are reporting problems with all these new features but for me they're all just working great. I'll consider myself lucky
 
Not working for me, in the UK on EE network, I have tethering etc. Works in the old way, personal hotspot style, able to use my phone's data plan etc, but not showing up in wifi networks as per instant hotspot...
 
Bluetooth

Everyone have bluetooth turned on and connected?

Haven't found this info from any guides I've went through but after testing it myself this seems to be a must have - the same time it seems to be the only thing between (supported) devices and instant hotspot.
 
Bluetooth is likely the key problem that people are facing. Bluetooth needs to be enabled on your phone and the device you want to connect with. Additionally, your device needs to have support for Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy. Nearly all iOS devices support this (exceptions are the iPad 3 and below, iPhone 4 and below; not sure about the 4S). Apple seems to have done something strange with their Macs: some Macs from 2011 have a Bluetooth 4.0 chipset, but have been "blacklisted" in OS X from using the feature. Kernel extension (kext) hacking can enable the feature; for those on machines without a Bluetooth 4.0 card, it's possible to install a new card and then hack the kext to get it working. Otherwise, it seems that the feature should work out of the box for Macs from 2012 and newer.
 
Crazy Badger said:
Tested again and still working as before. Personal Hotspot needs to be enabled on the iPhone before you can see it on the Mac, and sometimes even though it's enabled on the phone you still can see it without toggling it off and back on.

Don't see how this is any different to how it worked in previous versions of OS X other than the menu item now shows signal strength and battery life.
Click to expand...

The point of the Instant Hotspot feature is so that laptop users can "toggle" the hotspot feature ON without reaching for their iPhones and physically turning it on. If itʻs already ON, then as you mention, itʻs no different from the pre-Yosemite implementation.

If youʻre seeing your iPhone in your Wifi dropdown, with Personal Hotspot set to ON on your iPhone, and your iPhone doesnʻt show up in itʻs own section labeled Personal Hotspot with itʻs cellphone signal and battery life indicator, then youʻre using Hotspot the old way. Thatʻs not Instant Hotspot.

**Also, there are members reporting that Personal Hotspot is ON and theyʻre able to see the separate menu in the Wifi drop down, and also toggle Instant Hotspot ON. Why theyʻre able to do that...beats me. Could be a bug, could be "it just works" lol...who knows.
 
I stand corrected. Having tried a few more times, you can enable Personal Hotspot on your phone from OS X. Having updated from PB6 to the final release, it does seem a little more stable, although I suspect there will be very few (if any) differences.

Perhaps it's just the process of a full update rather than incremental updates through the beta program. I was having all sorts of issues with my iMac which I was planning on leaving on PB6, but decided to update that and it's running fine again now.
 
Works flawlessly for me, IPad RMini and an iPhone 6. In my case the iPad has my old unlimited data SIM, so it's a hotspot for my phone or any other device. Personal hotspot is off on the iPad, handoff is off on both devices, bluetooth is on for both devices, and the iPhone shows the iPad as a personal hotspot.
 
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