Share Your Mac's Wi-Fi with Your Phone Using Internet Sharing
Your Mac is authenticated. Your phone isn't. Here's how to share the connection without fighting the portal twice.
When this solves your problem
Some captive portals authenticate per device — your Mac completes the login and gets internet access, but your iPhone has to go through the portal separately, and sometimes it can’t. Common scenarios:
- The portal only allows one device per room code
- Your phone’s browser can’t render the portal login form correctly
- The portal has already expired your phone’s session from a previous stay
- You’re on hotel ethernet on your Mac and want your phone to share it
macOS Internet Sharing lets your authenticated Mac act as a router for your phone. Your phone connects through the Mac and uses the same already-authenticated session.
Share over USB (most reliable)
Why USB first: It’s faster, more stable, and doesn’t require your Mac to broadcast a Wi-Fi network simultaneously (which can reduce throughput on the existing connection).
- Plug your iPhone into your Mac with a USB cable
- If prompted on iPhone, tap Trust and enter your passcode
- On your Mac: System Settings → General → Sharing
- Click Internet Sharing (don’t enable it yet — configure first)
- Share your connection from: choose your Mac’s current internet source — typically Wi-Fi (the hotel network you’re authenticated on) or Ethernet
- To computers using: check iPhone USB
- Now toggle Internet Sharing on
Your iPhone detects the shared connection automatically. Check Settings → Wi-Fi on the phone — it may show a USB icon instead of Wi-Fi bars when the USB internet connection is active.
Share over Wi-Fi (no cable needed)
Your Mac can create its own Wi-Fi hotspot and share its internet connection over it.
- System Settings → General → Sharing → Internet Sharing
- Share your connection from: choose your source (Ethernet is ideal; Wi-Fi-to-Wi-Fi works but see the note below)
- To computers using: check Wi-Fi
- Click Wi-Fi Options — set a network name and a password
- Toggle Internet Sharing on
On your iPhone: Settings → Wi-Fi → connect to your Mac’s new network name using the password you set.
Wi-Fi sharing from Wi-Fi: what to know
If your Mac is connected to hotel Wi-Fi and you want to share that same connection back out over Wi-Fi to your phone, macOS has to use the Wi-Fi chip for two things at once: maintaining the hotel connection and broadcasting the shared network. This works on most modern Macs but comes with tradeoffs:
- The hotel network and your shared network must be on different Wi-Fi channels — macOS picks this automatically
- Throughput may be lower than a wired connection
- Stability can be worse than USB
If the Wi-Fi option in the To computers using list is greyed out, your Mac can’t handle both networks simultaneously on its hardware. Use USB instead.
Turn it off when you leave
Internet Sharing doesn’t stop automatically when you disconnect from the hotel network or close your Mac. Go back to System Settings → General → Sharing and toggle Internet Sharing off before you leave. Leaving it on creates an active Wi-Fi hotspot that anyone nearby can see — and potentially connect to if the password is weak.
Alternative: just use your phone’s cellular hotspot
If your phone has cellular data and a plan that includes hotspot, that’s often faster than fighting the portal. Turn on Personal Hotspot on iPhone (Settings → Personal Hotspot) and connect your Mac to it. You avoid the portal entirely.
Internet Sharing on Mac is most useful when you want to go the other direction — Mac has the authenticated connection (hotel ethernet, confirmed hotel Wi-Fi) and the phone needs to share it.
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