I´m a frequent traveler and staying  online when away from home is very important to me. Apple iOS offers a cool way to easily connect your Macbook or Laptop and use your iPhone as a Router – the personal hotspot.

Activate your personal hotspot within your iPhone´s or iPad´s settings, set a wifi-password and your´re good to go.

It worked like a dream – but only once. After trying to connect a second time, my iPhone´s personal hotspot never showed up on my Macbook´s list of available wifi stations.

Several reboots later, toggling the wifi, setting a new password etc. there was still no way of connecting reliably to my personal hotspot.

It worked once in a while and I wasn’t able to determine the exact cause of the problem or reproduce the effect.

It was so annoying.

After several days of not being able to master such a straight forward process, I put away my pride and asked Google.

The solution was simple. When connecting the first device, the „personal hotspot“ settings menu of your iOS device must be open. Otherwise your hotspot won’t show up. The procedure is only necessary when establishing the first connection. From that point on,  the hotspot ist visible to other devices.

This has to be repeated after disconnecting the last device or deactivating the hotspot.

Apple has implemented that step to prevent an activated hotspot from constantly broadcasting a wifi beacon when not in use.

Very clever, but far from self-explaining in terms of usability.