Finding good Internet access for your Mac or Wi-Fi-only iPad while traveling can be maddening. Look in your Wi-Fi menu while sitting in an airport and you’ll see a bunch of networks, most of which require a password, are someone’s printer or won’t connect for other reasons. It isn’t any better when you reach your destination since many hotels charge outrageous rates for Wi-Fi. When I am traveling on my motorcycle and looking for a hotel finding reliable Wi-Fi can be a challenge. And while you might be able to find a Starbucks with free public Wi-Fi, those networks may not be secure—a hacker on the same network could watch your unencrypted Internet traffic.
If you’re like most Apple users, the solution is in your pocket or purse: your iPhone! For a number of years, turning on iOS’s Personal Hotspot feature involved additional fees from your cellular carrier, which dissuaded many people from using it. Nowadays, however, most mobile phone plans don’t charge extra for tethering, as it’s most often called. If you have an “unlimited” plan, your carrier may throttle your bandwidth if you exceed some usage level because the carrier doesn’t want customers to use tethering for their primary Internet connections. Double-check your plan, but if you won’t have to pay more to use tethering, here’s how to use it to solve Wi-Fi problems while on the road.
On your iPhone (or cellular-enabled iPad), go to Settings > Personal Hotspot and enable the switch for Personal Hotspot. Then tap Wi-Fi Password, and in the next screen, enter a password. It must be at least 8 characters and can use only ASCII characters (English letters, numbers, and standard punctuation marks). It shouldn’t be trivial (like “password”), but don’t worry about making it super strong, since your iPhone isn’t likely to be in any single location long enough for someone to try to crack it. (You can also share a Personal Hotspot connection via Bluetooth or a USB cable, but both are fussier and may not work as well).
Then, from your Mac, click the Wi-Fi menu in the menu bar and choose the network named for your iPhone—it may appear under a Personal Hotspot heading and will have a Personal Hotspot icon. From an iPad or another iOS device, go to Settings > Wi-Fi and select the iPhone’s network.
In either case, if both devices are signed into the same iCloud account and have Bluetooth turned on, Apple’s Instant Hotspot feature should make it so you don’t have to enter the password. It’s no great hardship if you do have to type the password; the Mac or iPad should remember it for future use.
Once you’re connected, everything should work just as though you were using a normal Wi-Fi network. Performance might be a little slow, but since random public Wi-Fi networks are often pokey, it may be better than you’d get otherwise.
I have found that even sharing a cellular network connection with a Personal Hotspot to your Mac or iPad from your iPhone can be faster than the Wi-Fi in some convention halls or hotels.
If you worry about using too much data and generating overage charges or getting throttled, pay attention to what apps and services use bandwidth on your Mac. Things like Dropbox, Backblaze, and iCloud Photo Library can slurp a lot of data in the background so you may want to turn them off.
When you finish tethering, turn off the Personal Hotspot switch on your iPhone to make sure it doesn’t use any extra battery life or allow another of your devices to consume cellular data inadvertently. Your iPhone will tell you with a banner on the home screen if you have devices connected to your Personal Hotspot.
Speaking of the website, smalldog.com has been refreshed lately. Check out the new look. I think Mike Moffit did an awesome job in modernizing our online presence. More changes are coming but let me know what you think of the new look!