New macOS Tahoe lets you automatically join an iPhone hotspot
In the olden days, cellular data was slow and prohibitively expensive, forcing people to frantically search for Wi-Fi spots when away from home (it's one of the early reasons why Starbucks got popular; every venue had a working Wi-Fi hotspot back in the early aughts).
This is no longer the case. Personally, I almost never bother with Wi-Fi because the data plan on my phone allows me to do serious work on the go without ever worrying about the data expenditure.
Apple must've realized that, which is why the company introduced a small but important option in macOS Tahoe 26: You can now set your Mac to automatically join an iPhone hotspot (via MacRumors).
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To do so, go to Settings - Wi-Fi - and under "Ask to join hotspots" you can now choose between "Never," "Ask To Join," and "Automatic" (Previously, you could only set "Ask to join hotspots" to on or off).
The same feature is also preset on iPadOS 26, and is equally useful there.
As someone who works on the go very often, it's annoying to have to manually approve joining a hotspot every time I wanted to go online (which is always). And as I have to slog through dozens of (largely unnecessary) manual approvals (I'm looking at you, EU cookie directive) every day, I'm grateful that I have one less to worry about.
Topics Apple
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
