How to make instant hotspot work? iPad Air 2

[Traverse]

I finally got an iPad Air 2 and one of the little things I was looking so forward to was not having to wake my phone, go to settings, and sitting in the Personal Hotspot menu until my iPad connects and have to repeat the processes every time I let my iPad sleep for a prolonged time.

Starting in iOS 8, isn't my iPad Air 2 supposed to connect to my phone instantly? I've never gotten this to work on my iPad or Mac. I still have to go into Personal Hotspot on my phone and let it sit there on the menu until my iPad connects. I had to put in the password as well.

I've already read Apple's publication on how to use it. Is this a problem in iOS 9 or does this just not work?

 

[rigormortis]

all iPads and macs have to use the newer bluetooth 4.0 low energy. if they do not have the new bluetooth chips in them, then you will see the hotspots in the regular list of wifi networks. and you will have to be in the discovery page like you said. if everything is fine with instant hotspot, the iPhone can be locked and and asleep and you will still be able to connect to it via instant hotspot.

people used to say you had to pair each device with each other with bluetooth , but this is not true at all.



yeah sometimes its not very reliable. i had to try multiple times to connect to my iPhone right now with my mac book pro

the ipad , in sleep mode, with its cover on and not connected to the charger, connected as an instant hotspot the first time

all you can try is to remove every single device from handoff and then turn on hand off again.
make sure bluetooth and wifi are on every single device. a lot of times i think its broken, but i find out i am an idiot, and i turned off bluetooth

the other thing I've noticed is it seems to me that you need the current versions of iOS and os x. , i think its just me, though


each time i updated to iOS back in iOS 8, guess, i had to turn off continuity and turn it back on on all devices. , it seems to me that each version had to have its continuity / hand off logged off and on after updating.

 

[rigormortis]

its not supposed to connect to the iPhone instantly. what i mean is say you have an ipad air, and you want to connect to your iPhone. each time you have to go into the wifi page on the ipad air and select "iPhone" to connect to it.

that is all your supposed to do

it doesn't just automatically connect to it, like when you take your iPhone home and it sees your home wifi network as a favorite and it connects to it

your not supposed to have to go into the iPhone each and every time and go to its hotspot page to enable connecting to it

so if thats happening, it requires you to turn off handoff on everything and turn it back on

 

[Phil A.]

First thing to check is you must have Bluetooth turned on on both devices and they both must be logged in to the same primary iCloud account
What iPhone have you got?

 

[Traverse]

make sure bluetooth and wifi are on every single device. a lot of times i think its broken, but i find out i am an idiot, and i turned off bluetooth

First thing to check is you must have Bluetooth turned on on both devices and they both must be logged in to the same primary iCloud account
What iPhone have you got?

Ah! I see. I don't have Bluetooth enabled on any of my iOS devices because I never use it and wanted to save battery.

I have an iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2, but I've disabled handoff and every other Continuity feature except text message forwarding. Instant Hotspot is a no go for me I guess because I doubt I'll ever leave Bluetooth on.

 

[rigormortis]

Ah! I see. I don't have Bluetooth enabled on any of my iOS devices because I never use it and wanted to save battery.

I have an iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2, but I've disabled handoff and every other Continuity feature except text message forwarding. Instant Hotspot is a no go for me I guess because I doubt I'll ever leave Bluetooth on.

you need bluetooth on because it uses bluetooth to tell the device to turn on its hotspot. bluetooth is also used
to give apple watch your wifi passwords. i found that it by messing around with my watch and watch os 2.0

i would tell my iPhone to forget a wifi network
my watch would continue to use that wifi network because of watch os 2
i turn off bluetooth on the iPhone
i reboot the watch
the apple watch forgets how to connect to the wifi network
apple watch remembers all the other networks
it can continue to connect to wifi because of watch os 2
i reconnect iPhone to wifi
as soon as i turn on bluetooth on the iPhone , the wifi password goes straight to the watch and it connects.

it almost seemed to me that all wifi passwords are stored in ram, but that wasn't it

so the moral of the story is, you can push information to bluetooth device , but you cannot push information to a wifi device.. all you can do to a wifi device is connect to it

 

[iFanaddic]

Ah! I see. I don't have Bluetooth enabled on any of my iOS devices because I never use it and wanted to save battery.

I have an iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2, but I've disabled handoff and every other Continuity feature except text message forwarding. Instant Hotspot is a no go for me I guess because I doubt I'll ever leave Bluetooth on.

I am curious to hear if the solutions offered fixed your issues. I also have and iPad air 2 and an iPhone 6 with bluetooth ON and I have to reconnect my iPad everytime it's been in sleep mode for a little while. I gotta go into settings and reselect my iPhone network. I did reset my network settings on both devices but still gotta do this everytime I wanna use my tablet.

 

[Traverse]

I am curious about


I am curious to hear if the solutions offered fixed your issues. I also have and iPad air 2 and an iPhone 6 with bluetooth ON and I have to reconnect my iPad everytime it's been in sleep mode for a little while. I gotta go into settings and reselect my iPhone network. I did reset my network settings on both devices but still gotta do this everytime I wanna use my tablet.

No they didn't. Just for the heck of it I turned on Bluetooth and try to get it to work and I still had to set it up the old manual way. It's not worth it to me to sign out of iCloud any race all my network settings