Hi guys, David and David here from payetteforward.com and upphone.com, and in this video, we're
going to explain what to do when Personal Hotspot is not working on your iPhone.
Personal Hotspot is one of the only features on your iPhone that your carrier actually
has control over.
If you have a cell phone plan that includes Personal Hotspot, it's going to show up in
the Settings app.
If your cell phone plan doesn't include Personal Hotspot, it's not going to be there.
So let's start by opening up the Settings app..
Sure.
thing.
Here we go.
Settings.
David has a plan with her... Personal Hotspot.
I keep wanting to say "Hersonal Potspot."
That's not... that's not right.
Personal Hotspot. Now we also want to say the next thing to check is what to do if Personal
Hotspot is grayed out on your iPhone.
And that's — that's airplane — if Airplane Mode is on.
I'll just turn it on real quick to show you.
If Airplane Mode is on, Personal Hotspot gets grayed out out and then you can't... you can't,
tap it.
You can't do anything and it won't tell you why.
So, just, you know, tap that switch next to Airplane Mode.
Make sure it's positioned to the left.
If it's white, that means Airplane Mode is off.
Hmm.
And now, let's just, tap on Personal Hotspot quick.
Make sure you have it turned on.
You have to tap the switch in the upper right-hand corner of the screen next to Personal Hotspot.
And then there's the Wi-Fi password.
Let's say that everything's looks like it's working.
Yes.
But maybe your other device won't connect to it.
Maybe it will.
Either way — either way, you have to... if it will connect, it not have an internet
connection.
If it won't connect, there might be a problem with the thing.
We just want to reset everything.
Yes, right.
So we're going to reset your iPhone, and we're going to reset the other device.
Sure. because it could be on either end.
So first let's talk about iPhones.
If you have an iPhone 8 earlier, press and hold the power button until slide to power
off appears.
If you have an iPhone X or newer, press and hold the side button and either volume button.
Yep.
Slide to power off appears.
Swipe it left to right, the iPhone turns off.
Wait 15 seconds.
Turn it back on.
Yep.
Now, on your other device, we're going to go through every device in the world.
You know how to do it.
Unplug it, or, you know, press and hold the power button on your other device.
Right.
So the next thing we're going to do is just turn hotspot off and back on again.
After your iPhone reboots —. Sure.
— let's just make sure that works.
So hotspot on, off, on, just, tap the switch a bunch of times.
Alright, so now we've sort of done the unplug it, plug it back in tricks.
Now, we're going to get into some of the more technical fixes.
All right.
The first one is cellular... what's it called?
Carrier Settings?
A Carrier Settings Update.
They are frequently released by... not frequently.
There's sometimes released by Apple or your wireless carrier; improves your iPhone's ability
to connect to your carrier's network.
Pretty easy to check for this.
First of all, if one's available, you should see a pop-up like every 15 minutes saying
update your carrier Settings.
Just, tap update.
But you can also manually check by opening Settings, tapping General, tapping About,
and wait here for 10 to 15 seconds.
If a Carrier Settings Update is available, a pop-up will appear on the screen, and if
it's not available, you know, nothing will happen.
There's no "Check for Carrier Settings Update" button on your iPhone.
I've waited, you know, 10 seconds.
It's not available.
It's not there.
That's fine.
Yeah.
So, next step: We're going to update iOS.
Again, Settings app, tap General, tap Software Update.
I don't think I have one available.
Yep.
Yeah, iOS updates often solve software issues in this could be one of them.
They.
Sure.
do.
So we've checked Carrier Settings Update — not available — iOS update not available.
Next, we're going to reset the network Settings on your iPhone, which erases all the Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, cellular, and VPN Settings — right — right back to factory Settings.
And the stuff in the background.
So my buddy Dave actually used upphone.com.
I helped him out... to find a cell phone plan where he could switch from one plan where
we paid 200 bucks a month to another plan where he was paying a hundred bucks a month
for two lines.
And he got the new SIM card, he kept his phone, and he put it in, and iMessage wasn't working
and Personal Hotspot was totally missing.
So there was some sort of an issue between the phone and the plan and Verizon was saying,
oh, yeah, it's totally the phone, and then Apple was saying, it's totally Verizon's fault,
which always happened.
So what Dave had to do was come to his friend Dave.
Yeah.
Everybody's Dave in my life.
And then I helped him to fix the problem which we did with Reset Network Settings.
All right, so, let's show them how to do it.
Let's go back to the main page in the Settings up.
Here we are.
We're going to scroll down.
We're going to, tap General, scroll all the way down to reset, tap Reset Network Settings,
and, tap Reset Network Settings again to confirm.
Before you do this, just make sure you've written down all your Wi-Fi passwords, and
just, you know, you'll have to reconnect your Bluetooth devices afterwards, but it's you
know, not that... not that big of a deal, but it will fix this problem if you're.
Sure.
you have mobile hotspot as part of your plan, your phone's supposed to... this will fix
that.
So the last step we can take to completely rule out a software problem is a DFU restore.
A DFU restore is the deepest type of restore that you can do on an iPhone.
It takes everything off and puts it all back on again.
So you're going to have to back up your data first, but then after you do that, you know,
if you then put your data back on your phone and Personal Hotspot still isn't working,
it's time to take more drastic steps.
Yeah.
First of all, let's just say we have DFU restore guides — link in a card above and in the
description section below.
But now for the drastic steps.
Yeah.
Contact you wireless carrier.
You'll have to get on the phone with customer service.
Oh dear.
That's pretty drastic.
Yeah.
Does my plan have Personal Hotspot?
That's the question to ask.
And the thing is too, like, you call your carrier.
They might say go to Apple, which they will say.
They'll say go to your carrier, they'll ping-pong you back and forth sometimes.
Right.
You may need to switch out a SIM card.
You can suggest that to your carrier.
Yep, but new SIM card and Reset Network Settings — if you those things don't work, then there's
some sort of weird problem.
Yeah.
Those things will work.
If your carrier says go to Apple, you know, go to Apple, see if they can do anything maybe,
but yeah... ping pong.
Or if you find out that your plan doesn't have mobile hotspot, and you want mobile hotspot,
maybe you should consider checking out upphone.com.
Check out our cell phone plan comparison tool.
We even have a nice filter.
Yeah.
A features filter.
You can click mobile hotspot and see all the plans that have mobile hotspot included.
Yeah.
It's really easy.
Super simple.
Yes.
So we talked about going to the Apple Store.
This is not a thing where you want to go to a third party repair shop... there have absolutely
no control over this.
This has to do with the hardware inside the phone, but it's not like you can swap out
the Personal Hotspot piece.
Yeah, it really is an Apple problem and it's a carrier problem.
Yeah, so don't go to a third-party repair shop.
Yeah. Because they'll just try, you know, if they
tell you, oh, you need a new "this" — it's
a scam.
But yeah, thank you guys for watching this video.
That's how to fix the problem when Personal Hotspot is not working on your iPhone.
Leave us a comment down below.
Let us know what you think.
If this video helped you solve the problem, give it a thumbs up, and don't forget to subscribe
to this channel and click the Notifications Bell to get an immediate alert when we
upload a new video.