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A bit hard to understand you but no iOS does not disconnect all the devices when you lock the phone. I often use hotspot because the internet at work is shit. My phone does not have to be unlock all day, that would be stupid.
I think iOS does disconnect the device if there is no network activity after a certain time but I am not very sure about this. Correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, but when I accidentally hit the side button on my iPhone SE instantly got disconnected so it’s not got anything to do with the network traffic
It may only happen if hotspot user has also kept phone idle for some time.
Nope. That’s exactly how it doesn’t work. I always lock my phone when hotspotting and it never disconnects.
Happens quite often on my 11 pro, no issue with my 15 pro. Probably due to 11 pro having a shitty intel modem
This only occurs when no one is connected to the hotspot.
I have never had this issue….
Same here. I’ve had my hotspot on my laptop all day long with no disconnects, and my phone being locked.
Another thing, can iPhones be connected to a wifi and be used as a hotspot for other devices at the same time? Androids can do it
no, it can't. That'd require 2-way wifi antenna, which the iphone doesn't have.
No but iOS makes sharing WiFi passwords trivially easy.
Never experienced this before either
I’m going to clear up something, because I don’t think my post was clear enough, so after amount of time not specified by the user regardless if you have low data mode, enabled or disabled, it automatically turns off the hotspot, regardless of how much battery you have, regardless of your mobile signal, regardless of what mobile plan you’re using regardless of what service provide you using regardless of what iOS version you’re using, regardless of what iPhone or iPad you’re using Regardless of what security settings you have and it’s affected me, using an iPhone 6s Plus and my cousin using an iPhone 14 and iPhone 11 and an iPhone 8 and it’s really frustrating to have this problem as it means me a visually impaired person having to go to her individual just to make her turn on the personal hotspot again. This doesn’t happen on android is android has a setting in mobile hotspot to allow devices to stay connected for as long as possible so say if my iPhone 5 like even though I don’t have one but this is just an example so my galaxy S 24 ultra is using is using a hotspot from an iPhone 6 ultra promax and then like 10 2030 minutes later, the hotspot gets disconnected, but yet on the flipside, when I use my galaxy as a hotspot, it doesn’t disconnect The iPhone
I’m just saying I’ve never replicated your situation with a few devices and iOS releases.
“I’m going to clear up something” - Proceeds to write a few run on sentences that are even more confusing than the original post.
I know what you’re saying though, I often have to go to my hotspot settings and remind the iPhone that it should be available, even though my settings are set as such. My son will have to ask me to do it whenever he wants to join from his iPad.
Never heard this before.
I usually connect to my hotspot during transfers and i never got problems, maybe you need to manually turn it on if you want to connect but i always maintained connection
But here’s the thing that’s really weird. Once my screen locks on the guest device, the host device still has personal hotspot and enabled but yet on the host device they have to disable and then re-enable personal hotspot for the guest device to reconnect to that hotspot.
Wut? I've never faced that issue, neither with my 6S on iOS 15, nor my 14 Plus on iOS 17. And I use it quite regularly because the sim slot in one of my cars is pooched so I have to hotspot.
I’ve not seen reports of this bug and I’ve never experienced it. I’ve run basically every beta since iOS 13, had every generation since the iPhone 7, and I have my own iPads plus all of my kid’s iPads across a couple of generations and I’ve never experienced it disconnecting when the screen becomes locked.
I’ve had it where they couldn’t see the network if I lock before they’ve connected, but once they’ve connected I’ve never seen disconnects just because the screen is locked.
I would be royally irritated if I did experience it though. Have you tried erasing everything and setting the phone up as new and hotspotting? Maybe there’s a small bug somewhere in your backup causing the issue that a restore carries over?
I'm not sure I understand you completely, since most of your post is incoherent, however, if I get the point right, I believe you either have a defective device or some funky setting, as I have no issue using this function. I used my iPhone hotspot on my car stereo on long journies, obviously my phone screen wasn't on all the time. I also share with friends from time to time and don't keep my phone screen on while they're using my wifi. So it's definitely not the intentional way of it working.
I have never seen this… including multiple multi-hour sessions where my iPhone was the hotspot for other laptops.
I totally understand the issue. Most people won’t notice the problem if all they do is hotspot their iPhone to say their computer and remain stationary/within wifi range the entire time. The problem with the iOS hotspot implementation is two fold:
Aggressive battery saving. The hotspot turns itself off/becomes undiscoverable very quickly if no devices are connected. There’s no option to just keep it on all the time.
The UI doesn’t make it clear that for the hotspot to be discoverable you need to keep the hotspot screen open until your desired devices have connected.
Behaviour 1 becomes an issue when you want to hotspot your iPhone to friends/family while you’re out and about. The other devices come in and out of wifi range and your iPhones hotspot will turn itself off when there’s no connected devices, forcing you to continually turn it back on over and over.
Behaviour 2 is confusing and a bit unintuitive. You open the hotspot setting, enable ‘allow others to join’ option, then close the settings app/lock the phone and expect the hotspot to just be on. Only after experimenting with this multiple times did I realise that you have to keep the phone unlocked and on the hotspot settings while the devices are stilling connecting. An alternative is to long press the wifi/data tile in the control center and enable ‘personal hotspot’ but it’s unclear how long it remains ‘on/discoverable’ for.
Your second bullet is not true at all. I can discover my phone without being on the hotspot screen.
With my iPad I can connect to my iPhone hotspot anytime without touching the phone. But everything else requires me to open the hotspot screen first until connected. Just curious if you’re using another Apple device logged into the same account or not.
iPad and MacBook Pro. And my wife’s iPad occasionally.
I remember reading once that if your device is on the same Apple id then it should connect without having to open the phone hotspot settings screen, however I’m not sure how you wouldn’t have the issue when connecting from say your wife’s which most likely is a separate Apple ID.
Are you using both Apple products? If you’re signed into the same iCloud then it will show up and tapping on the phone will enable the hotspot. Apple does their own special thing to make your other device discoverable to your other Apple devices.
Never had this issue my daughter uses mine all the time in the car.
What device is she using to connect to your hotspot? And are you two sharing the same Apple ID?V
I know many don’t have this issue, but a lot of people do. Just a quick look at Apple forums and you can see “my hotspot stops when screen is locked” types of post.
I do wish it would be similar on how it’s done in Android.
100000% agree. You can keep hotspot on and visible at all times, so any device can join in, not only Apple devices that are under the same Apple account or family members, some can be scheduled to turn off after an x amount of time, some can even act as a router depending on hardware and root access.
Years ago when I used to jailbreak, there were tools to make similar functions for iPhone, but I don’t touch jailbreak for more than a decade now.
Yes, I hate this. I usually use my iPhone hotspot for work so it's annoying when I'm randomly doing something on the PC and it just shuts off for no reason.
Personal hotspot doesn't disconnect because locked screen but rather if there is no network traffic I think.
Im pretty sure it's not about locking the screen but could be wrong.
But there is different problem that probably not much people recognized.
You can't simply run hotspot and click power button to off the screen.
Hotspot is only visible to devices when you STAY on Hotspot settings for few seconds before second device connects to it.
This is kinda annoying.
I used my phone as hot spot for my PC for around 4 weeks daily for sometimes up to 16 hours non stop because I had a problem with my internet provider. Never had any problems with this and honestly never heard of this by anyone either. Sounds like a you and your brother problem to me.
Damn that phone must have been running hot
I have noticed that there is no problem using personal hotspot on when I connect my iPhone to say an android device or Windows computer. But once I connected to other Apple devices.
I carry 2 iphones every day and sometimes I get better signal on one of them, enable personal hotspot and keep browsing.
The real stupid thing is apple shutting down the hotspot when you‘re not connected to your second iphone and the other device is not using the internet for a minute. Like when you make a hotspot for your windows laptop. Go to the bathroom -> reenable the hotspot.
Never had that issue and using it all the time for years.
I do have this issue constantly.
Never had that issue.
Is this the same people that posted the fake 12% battery health post?
I've had a similar issue where my hotspot would stop after some time when the phone was new. Somehow it got fixed by itself after some time lol
i had the same issues with my xs max but with my 15 plus not anymore
Never had this issue. I use my hot spot a lot.
Connect to it with android tablets, iPads, windows PC, other iPhones. I set up the hot spot, lock my phone and lay it on the table.
iOS definitely has hotpot issues compared to Android
Try connecting bluetooth instead of wifi. Turn on hotspot & bluetooth of phone 1 and bluetooth phone 2. Select to connect to bluetooth of phone 1 from phone 2. This solved it for me, i had this issue too.
I play pokemon go on 2 phones. Stable for 3hrs straight gaming no issue with bluetooth, but with wifi will disconnect occasionally.
Turn off low data mode. That'll stop the disconnecting issues.
Rubbish, I use my hotspot with the screen locked and still in my pocket.