Picture the situation: you go to a friend’s house for dinner or an unfamiliar office for a meeting. You want to login to the local Wi-Fi but nobody can remember the password. You could keep asking around until everybody is sick of you. You could hunt for the router and hope it’s printed on the back. You could give up on Wi-Fi and use your precious cellular data instead.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easier option than fiddling with complicated, forgettable, easily-mistyped passwords?
Well, if your host also has an iPhone, there’s a much simpler solution: instant password sharing.
How to share Wi-Fi
This feature is mostly automatic. All you’ll need to do is open up Settings > Wi-Fi and tap on the network you want to join. As usual, it’ll ask for the password. Instead of typing anything in, simply move the device closer to someone already connected to the network.
So long as you both have Bluetooth enabled – and the other person has you added as a contact – the other user will automatically receive a prompt asking if they’d like to share the password. It should work from across the room, but try moving the devices side-by-side if nothing happens as the connection is proximity based. They’ll need to unlock the device to respond.
The prompt will say something like “Do you want to share the Wi-Fi password for [network name] with [your name]?” Simply ask that user to tap Share Password and the code will be automatically entered on your device, as if by magic. Tap Done and you’ll connect!
This feature isn’t just for iOS devices – it’ll also work any Mac computer running High Sierra or above.