Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) unable to connect to “Personal Hotspot” on an iPad running iOS 8
Solution 1
Tim Klein posted a solution on the Apple Support Community that did the trick:
- Sign out of the iCloud account on both devices. (I let iCloud delete everything when asked. It all comes back when sign back in later)
- Reset Network Settings on the iPhone (General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings)
- If necessary, Rename the phone to what you want it called (General -> About -> Name. Resetting network settings consistently renamed my phone to just “iPhone”)
- Power down both devices.
- Restart iPhone and log back in to iCloud.
- Restart other device and log back into iCloud.
I had my doubts as to whether this would actually fix a personal hotspot issue, but I’m happy to report it did. I hope it helps someone else, too.
Solution 2
In my case, just signing out of iCloud on the Mac then connecting to the hotspot prompted for a password, when it hadn't been prompting for password before. I was then able to connect
My iPhone was replaced entirely by Apple Support so a new Hotspot password was generated - I'm guessing iCloud had an old copy of the password and wasn't realizing that that one didn't work and it needed a different pwd.
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Timothy R. Butler
I'm Pastor of Little Hills Church and FaithTree Christian Fellowship. I also am a writer and the editor of Open for Business. Church historian, Shakespeare lover, former professor, Apple/*nix geek, Perl wrangler since 1997.
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Timothy R. Butler over 1 year
After I moved over to a new user account on my Mac—to try to fix another issue—my Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) and iOS 8 “Personal Hotspot” function quit working.
At first it wouldn’t show my iPad’s availability at all. But after deleting the Mac OS X keychain and resychronizing with iCloud Keychain, I could see my iPad in the Wi-Fi network list as an available “Personal Hotspot” once again but I still couldn’t actually connect to the “Personal Hotspot” on my iPad.
The error that would eventually pop up would be:
Failed to enable Personal Hotspot on [Device]. Check to see if the tethering device is turned on and in range of your computer.
I tried turning on and off Bluetooth, deleting my iPad from Mac OS X's Bluetooth preferences, etc… to no avail.
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Nate over 8 yearsWhile this works for a while, my Personal Hotspot feature always eventually stops working, usually after several days.
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Admin almost 8 yearsIn my case is stops basically next time I want to use it, so in few hours. Do we know what is the root cause?
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Private_Citizen almost 5 yearsThis worked for me, basically instantly. When I signed out of iCloud on my Mac, my phone moved from the 'Personal Hotpsot' section of the WiFi dropdown menu and into the wifi networks. I could then connect and things started working immediately.