You’re online, using your Android smartphone as your Internet connection.Microsoft on Tuesday said it's planning to take on one of the biggest advantages Apple products have, introducing new interoperability features to make its Windows 11 software for PCs talk to iPhones in order to display notifications, send messages, and make and receive calls. On the Mac, you can now pop over to the “Network” system preference, where “Bluetooth PAN” should be on top and showing connected, as you can see:ĭone. Tap on “ PAIR” on your phone and you’ve granted your Mac permission to connect with and use your Android wifi hotspot tethering capability. Meanwhile, on your phone, this will pop up, hopefully with the same six digit number: Easily done by tapping on “ Pair“, which brings up a code: The XR6M10 is my tablet, so that’s what I’ll want to pair with.

Choose “System Preferences…” from the Apple menu or otherwise make your way to the Bluetooth settings. Now all the action is on your Mac, so switch to that.

That’s all you need to do on your Android phone. Otherwise you’re “off the grid” and safe. That’s a good security feature, so that the only way someone can connect to you via Bluetooth is if you are actually in the Bluetooth settings area. Next step is to go back and leave the phone in “Bluetooth” mode:Īs you can see, the system actually highlights that the device is “visible to nearby devices while Bluetooth settings is open”. If you don’t have that enabled, just use your finger to slide the option to turn green, as shown. I already have “ Bluetooth tethering” enabled, as you can see. There’s what you want: “Tethering & portable hotspot”. That reveals more Wireless & Networks settings: For the first step, however, you’ll need to tap on the “ Remember that the Bluetooth settings are on this main screen, we’ll come back to that. But it has service, so can work as a hotspot too. For this, I’m actually using a relatively generic Android tablet. It’s a bit of fiddling to get everything to work properly, but I can step you through the process so it’s not too daunting. Just about every smart phone now has the ability to act as a hotspot too, whether you’re on an Apple iPhone or an Android phone like the Galaxy S7 or the LG V20. Smart solution: use your own hotspot so you know no-one else is sharing your bandwidth. While you may think that the shared network access at the local library, school or coffee shop is safe and secure, it really isn’t and anyone else sitting in that area could easily be analyzing all the traffic and extracting data from your Internet interaction. Any time you can avoid using a public, open wifi network, you’re ahead of the game.

Bluetooth tethering android to mac