Internet sharing has long been Apple’s way of letting you share an Internet connection used by your Mac with other people and devices, known as a hotspot. This is useful if you don’t have a Wi-Fi gateway you can use or if there’s a limitation that makes your Mac the only device with an Internet connection. With the reorganization of preferences in macOS Ventura, you may need to track down this feature if you need to configure it; consider this a guide to Ventura whether or not you’ve set up a macOS hotspot before.
Usually you share a connection that comes in via Ethernet over Wi-Fi, which is what I explain in the steps below. However, you can also share Wi-Fi over Ethernet and other combinations.
Here’s how:
- Open System settings > General > Parts. (This is where all System Preferences > Parts options migrated to.)
- Click the info i icon to the right of the Internet Sharing item.
- When prompted, authenticate with Touch ID, via a watch, or by entering a password.
- The dialog box that appears should be familiar if you’ve used this feature before. It’s a very slightly modified version of what’s been built into macOS for years. Select your Ethernet adapter from the “Share your connection from” pop-up menu.
- In the “To computers using” list, check the Wi-Fi box.
- Click the Wi-Fi options button at the bottom of the dialog box.
- Enter a name, choose a channel (see advice below), and set up security and a password (see more advice below).
- Click Okay and click Done.
- Click the switch next to it Internet sharing to enable this connection sharing.
- Read the warning and click Get started.
(Apple hasn’t reconsidered this message for many, many years. It ends with the strange advice for home users, the most likely to use it, to “Check with your system administrator before enabling Internet sharing”!)
Apple won’t let you share Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi since macOS doesn’t offer the ability to create virtual Wi-Fi networks, an option needed to connect to a Wi-Fi network as well as a separate network to make.
In step 7 above, choose a high-numbered channel (36, 40, 44, or 48) for a wider range than the low-numbered channels (1, 6, 11). The highly numbered channels use the 5GHz frequency band, which has been available for many years on all mainstream electronics, including all Apple hardware. If you have older equipment that can only use 2.4 GHz connections, choose 1, 6, or 11.
For security, Apple offers WPA2/WPA3 Personal or WPA3 Personal. In most cases, choose WPA2/WPA3 for compatibility. WPA3 is widely available, but it’s mostly found in hardware released in recent years. From a security point of view, it is not substantially different from WPA2.
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