Turn on your iPhone's hotspot from your Mac — the phone stays in your bag

On a train, in a café with no Wi-Fi, or at a client's office, you need internet on your laptop. The usual ritual: pull out your phone, unlock it, find settings, turn on the hotspot, pick the network on your Mac, type in the password. Instant Hotspot shrinks that entire process to one click: your Mac sees your iPhone in the Wi-Fi menu at all times — even when the hotspot isn't turned on at all on the phone — and connects to it by itself, no password needed. The phone can stay in your bag. It's called Instant Hotspot, and it's one of those features nobody had to configure, and yet it just works.

How to do it

1. Both iPhone and Mac need to be signed into the same Apple ID, with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned on. The iPhone needs an active data plan with internet sharing enabled from your carrier.
2. On your Mac, click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar. Under the heading Personal Hotspot, your iPhone appears — complete with a signal-strength icon and the phone's battery status.
3. Click it. The Mac remotely tells the phone to turn on the hotspot and connects — no password, no touching the phone.
4. Once you put your Mac to sleep or connect elsewhere, the phone turns its hotspot back off on its own, so it isn't needlessly draining the battery.
5. It works for iPad too — and in a family linked through Family Sharing, you'll also see family members' hotspots, if they've allowed it.
6. If the iPhone doesn't show up in the menu, it's usually one of three reasons: Bluetooth is off on the phone or the Mac, the devices aren't on the same Apple ID, or your carrier plan doesn't allow internet sharing — check the last one on iPhone under Settings → Personal Hotspot.
7. Hotspot data comes out of your cellular plan, so leave big downloads and heavy syncing for real Wi-Fi — but for document work, email, and video calls, the hotspot is plenty.

A typical scenario

A consultant is riding the train to a meeting and wants to polish a presentation. The train's Wi-Fi doesn't work. He used to dig his phone out of his bag between suitcases, unlock it, and click through to the hotspot. Now he just opens the Wi-Fi menu on his Mac, clicks his iPhone, and is working online within seconds. The icon also shows the phone has 40 percent battery left, so he knows to find an outlet at the meeting — without the phone ever leaving his bag. That evening at the hotel, the same click connects again, because the hotel network requires a registration screen full of ads — his own hotspot is faster and safer anyway.

What you get out of it

Connecting through your cellular plan stops being a ritual and becomes a single click — so you'll start using it even for the five minutes it "wasn't worth turning on" for before. And because the hotspot turns itself off after disconnecting, you also skip the classic evening surprise: a dead phone because the hotspot ran all afternoon for nothing.