How to use a Personal Hotspot on your Android Phone

Please note: These instructions are dependent upon your cell phone plan with your carrier. If you do not have Personal Hotspot service, you may not be able to follow these instructions. Please consult with your wireless provider to determine whether or not you have this service, and whether or not enabling this service will incur additional costs on your monthly bill.

If included/enabled on your wireless plan, please follow these instructions to enable a Personal Hotspot using your Android Phone. This will enable your non-cellular networked devices to connect to the internet using your cell phone's network.

Before you begin: The Android Phone operating system is open source, and very diverse. Many cell phone manufacturers will customize their installation such that some versions are indistinguishable from one another, while others may not even look like Android at all. Documenting each and every possible appearance is beyond the scope of this article. That said, these instructions should apply to any mainstream implementation of Android.

To setup your Personal Hotspot for the first time, or change the settings:

Open the Settings app, tap Network and Internet.

Tap Hotspot & tethering.

Tap Wi-Fi hotspot.

Tap Hotspot password, set a secure, unique, and private password.

Note: your hotspot's name is visible at this point. Change it if you wish.

Toggle Off to On, you should now be able to join the hotspot network with the name displayed above.

If you have used the hotspot feature before, you can enable it again using the following method:

Swipe Down from the top of your screen, tap Hotspot.

You should now be able to join your phone's hotspot network. Again, the default name may be different depending on your manufacturers implementation. It may be named after your phone's name, or just a default value like PersonalHotspot. If you changed the name, use the name you set.