Hands-On Apple 188 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Hands-On Apple, let's take a look at Wi-Fi troubleshooting on your iPhone and iPad. Stay tuned.

0:00:10 - Leo
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit.

0:00:30 - Mikah Sargent
Hello and welcome to Hands-On Apple. I am Micah Sargent and today we are going to take some time to talk about some of the Wi-Fi settings on your iPhone, your iPad, and talk about when and why, why things might be going wrong. This is a common question that I get from people, especially in regard to their social media browsing, where they are visiting sites and the sites aren't loading properly. Something is wrong. A very common thing that has been troubling me is scrolling through Instagram and having video stop loading midway through what I am looking at. So I want to talk about some of the features that are there and also just talk about general Wi-Fi settings. So let's head over to iPadOS and take a look Now. Importantly, this is iPadOS 18.5, which is a current, released version of iPadOS. It is not the beta. The stuff that we talk about here applies to anyone running the latest available version of iPadOS. So we've launched the settings app and we're in the Wi-Fi settings and, first and foremost, on this page, you have the ability to toggle off and toggle on Wi-Fi. Sometimes that's all it takes. By toggling it off here, as opposed to in Control Center, it will disconnect from Wi-Fi and essentially turn off the iPad's ability to connect to nearby networks. Toggling it back on will then force that connection to take place again. On this page you will also see networks that are saved that you can connect to again. These are networks that you commonly connect to that are considered yours for various reasons. So Micah 16 is an iPhone and Winterstein happens to be the guest network at my home. Other networks will show up below in the networks section. So the iPad is currently sort of looking around for other possible networks to join and if it were to find one that would show up in that section, if it is a network that is not broadcasting it's SSID, then you would tap other, you would type in the name of the network, the security type and type in the password to get it to actually let you connect.

Now you'll notice that I have two features below ask to join networks and that one is turned off. There are three options off, notify and ask. So what happens is if you are trying to connect to a network and there are no known networks, so my phone and the guest network and then my main network are not around then what will happen is the Wi-Fi or the system will say, hey, I can't find any networks that you normally connect to. Do you want to find something? Ask is going to give you the ability to try to connect to a network, but will ask you before you actually do it. So notify is just a little notification. Ask is going to say yes or no and give you that ability to connect. In this case I choose off because I don't want it to pop up and show me networks and say, hey, do you want to connect to one of these? No, I want to go in and make that choice myself.

The last section is auto join hotspot and essentially in this case it will look for nearby personal hotspots, so actual hotspots that you have some connection to, and join those. You can choose never ask to join, or automatic, where it will automatically connect. It will say, hey, I found a person, this is what ask to join. Does I found a personal network for you? Here's what it is. Do you want to join it or never? I have asked to join, turned on, because in that case I do want it to give me that ability.

Now, before we go a little bit deeper into the Wi-Fi page, there's one more thing I want to point out to you, and that is the edit button in the top right corner. Pressing on this edit button will do a face ID to look at your, to determine that you are you, and then it will show you all of the various networks that you have ever connected to, all of the known networks. And the reason that it does face ID is because this is actually on your key chain, which is Apple's sort of name for all of the credentials that you have. They're synced between devices via iCloud. So in this case, these are the known networks. You can choose to remove them or keep them, however you want to, and these you know. I've got networks from friends here. I've got networks from enemies, I've got networks from different iPhones that I've had in the past, so on and so forth, and then even down at the bottom, networks from Twit. So all of these are here and I can keep them saved, but I can also get rid of them. So if you ever have your device connecting to a network that you no longer want it to connect to, coming into this page by choosing edit, hitting the red circle next to the network and choosing delete, will remove that network, that Wi-Fi network, from your listing. And then it asks you are you sure you want to do this? It's going to remove it from iCloud, and I say yes, I do want you to do so, and so it does.

Now let's talk about the final set of Wi-Fi settings, and this in particular applies to what I was talking about before when it comes to having issues with apps not loading properly. I'll tap the eye icon next to the network and first and foremost, we have the forget this network option. This will remove it, just like it did in that edit option, but this is specific to a network that you have in front of you. Autojoin says if this network is available and I find this network, have this device connect to it. Now, of note, a common issue that I see that I experience myself is sometimes my device will automatically find my guest network before it finds my main network, and then we'll connect to that, and then I have trouble accessing some of my home devices, and that is because it auto joined the guest network. So I'll go into the Wi-Fi settings and see that it's set to Winterstein instead of Ashmead, which is obviously a problem. So I always make sure now to go into Winterstein and turn off auto join. Password here currently not displayed, but if you tap and hold on that, you can actually share that password with someone else.

The next option is low data mode. This is particularly handy if you have like a hotspot that is not just a personal hotspot from a phone but an actual sort of third party hotspot puck. Low data mode is going to turn off things like background tasks, like photo syncing and automatic updates, to make sure that you're not super using. You know that cellular network or maybe you're at a family member's house and their Wi-Fi is limited by a certain amount of data each month. Turning this off or turning this on will limit how much data you're using to just kind of the active things that you're doing on the device.

The next section is something that can cause issues on some networks. This is the private wifi address option, and what this does is every device that connects to a wifi network or a network has a MAC address, and this address is sort of the name of this device, the ID, the social security number, so to speak, even though it's not supposed to be used for ID, the social security number, so to speak, even though it's not supposed to be used for ID, the social security number of that device. And what's happened over time is different networks have used network tools, have used that social security number of your device to track it across the network. So you can say when this device connects the network it always has this set of rules, right? Well, that can be a privacy concern, particularly if you're connecting to public networks where if your social security number for your device, again the MAC address, shows up here near these stores and then later on it shows up here near these stores and those two companies talk to each other, there's the possibility that your location data and your activities and perhaps your shopping interests are all collected so over time. So over time, google, apple and others have added this functionality that makes it so you don't have the same and the true social security number of your device, your Mac address, displayed.

So there are some different options for private Wi-Fi address. There's off that's going to use the one that is built into the iPad and keep it that way Fixed is going to make it so that for every network there is a Mac address that is generated for that specific network. So it's still not your original Mac address but it is static per network and then rotating is actually going to change your Mac address regularly, so that, even if you connect to one network regularly, it's likely that your Mac address changes over time. Now, the reason that I say this could cause some issues is there are some networks that require a sort of identity fingerprint by way of MAC address, and there's a thing called MAC address filtering. So if you are ever having issues connecting to a network and you don't have access to sort of make adjustments to the address filtering or other similar tools, this could be what's causing your issue.

The next option here is easily the one that causes the most trouble. This is a feature that is not necessarily going to be something that you have access to, because it's actually a premium feature that Apple provides, and it is limit IP address tracking. And what this does is it hides your IP address using some clever behind-the-scenes mechanisms involving sending your. It's sort of like a VPN, but not exactly like a VPN, but sort of reroutes your connection through a couple locations to make you appear like you and others are all coming from the same place, which sounds a lot like a VPN, right, but it's a private relay feature and by turning this on, yes, you are helping to cut back on different online services' abilities to track you. If the relay servers are overloaded or for some reason, you're not able to get a good connection to those relay servers, then it slows down your connection immensely and, in some cases, prevents you from being able to view content on social media or other places. So that is why I have limit IP address tracking turned off.

Now, this is a feature that you could have both on cellular and on Wi-Fi, so be sure to check both places for this feature to be turned on, and sometimes for some people in some places, it works fantastically. For me that has not been the case, so I typically have it turned off. The rest of the stuff is very in-depth, very nerdy for many people and just has to do with how your router is assigning IPs to you. Dns and proxy is a whole nother level, and so we won't talk about those because typically those are not having an impact on things like being able to connect to your social media. But those other options are options you might want to take and, of course, just a better understanding of how these different pages and settings work and what they mean and what they do. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Hands on Apple. It's always a pleasure to bring this show to you. I'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, reach out to me, micah, at twittv. Thanks so much.

0:14:11 - Leo
Bye-bye, get your tech news exactly how Micah at twittv. Thanks so much, bye-bye. Get your tech news exactly how you want it with twittv. Tech News Weekly with Micah Sargent delivers quick hit coverage and exclusive journalist interviews giving you the inside scoop on breaking tech stories in under an hour. Now for deeper dives. I hope you'll join me, leo Laporte and a great panel of tech industry experts that's every Sunday with this Week in Tech, we'll break down everything from AI breakthroughs to privacy concerns to cybersecurity alerts in the tech world's longest running and most trusted tech news roundtable. So efficient or in-depth, the choice is yours. Subscribe to both shows wherever you get your podcasts, and head on over to our website, twittv, for even more independent tech journalism.