OS X El Capitan: The Missing Manual

Instant Hotspot

Paying your cell carrier another $20 or so every month entitles you to use the iPhone’s Personal Hotspot feature. That’s where the phone itself acts as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, so that your laptop (or any other gadgets) can get online almost anywhere.

It used to be kind of a pain to get going. Each time you wanted your laptop to get online, you had to wake your iPhone, unlock it, open Settings, and turn on Personal Hotspot. Then you had to wait about 20 seconds, until the phone’s name showed up in your menu.

Not anymore.

Now the phone can stay in your pocket. Its name appears in your menu, ready for choosing at any time—even if the phone is asleep and locked, and even if Personal Hotspot is turned off! Handily enough, the menu also shows the phone’s battery and signal status (Figure 7-5).

As usual, this works only if the iPhone and Mac both have Bluetooth turned on and are signed into the same iCloud account.

Figure 7-5. Once your Mac is online through your iPhone’s cellular connection, it tries to save you money by suspending data-intensive jobs like full backups and software ...