If you’re having issues with Personal Hotspot on your iPhone or iPad, you’re not alone

In this day and age of self-isolation amid coronavirus lockdowns, I’ve been having lots of issues with my broadband Internet connection (as have a lot of other people) now that many of us are working from home. Network congestion interferes with my work, so when this crisis began escalating I figured I should try using my iPhone’s cellular network instead.

Trying as much as I did, however, but Personal Hotspot kept failing.

As MacRumors recently reported, the iPhone maker has acknowledged this particular problem in an internal document distributed to its Authorized Service Providers.

Apple has told Authorized Service Providers to expect customers who are unable to connect to a Personal Hotspot or experience frequent disconnection from one. Customers may also experience general issues with data performance.

As I mentioned, I couldn’t successfully connect to my Personal Hotspot from my Mac at all. I also tried using Personal Hotspot with my iPad, no dice. At the time, I chalked up these problems to network load because of the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders.

Not once did it occur to me that the problems I was facing could be a software bug.

I’m very glad Apple’s not only acknowledged it but also confirmed that it’s a software issue, not a hardware problem, meaning the company should easily fix it in a future iOS update.

TROUBLESHOOTER: Personal Hotspot not working? Try these fixes.

Yes, I pored over the iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4 changelogs and their associated security documents. No, I didn’t find any mentions of Personal Hotspot fixes. iOS 13.4.5 is currently in testing, but not having the beta installed prevented me from verifying whether it fixed the issue.

Press the Network card in Control Center to adjust Personal Hotspot visibility

If you ask me, Apple will probably deliver a fix for these Personal Hotspot hiccups in iOS 13.4.1. That update might release this week, bringing a plethora of other bug fixes — including a patch for the nasty VPN bug that prevents network data traffic from being encrypted.

TIP: Stop auto-join for Personal Hotspot when WI-Fi is unavailable

Apple’s support forums reported Personal Hotspot issues as far back as iOS 13.1.2 so this has definitely been present in iOS code for some time now. In light of the current coronavirus situation and stay-at-home orders, we’re highlighting it here for everyone as this is something you may want to know if you plan on using your Personal Hotspot while working remotely.

So, are your devices exhibiting any problems with the Personal Hotspot feature?

Please report your findings in the comments down below.