Mobile Hotspots are a feature that have been baked into Android for nearly a decade. For those who are not aware of what it does, it’s basically a way of taking your wireless connection and sharing it with other devices.
Much like you would connect to a router at home, mobile hotspots make it so that you or others can piggyback off of your mobile 4G and 5G data. It’s helpful stuff for laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets which would otherwise be offline when out in the wild.
In this guide, we will walk you through all the steps involved in setting up a mobile hotspot on Android 10.
Setting up a mobile hotspot on Android 10
To start, open your Settings and open your Wi-Fi & Internet menu. This can vary from one OEM to the other but mobile hotspot settings are most commonly found in the Wi-Fi settings menu.
Next, choose Hotspot & Tethering, or anything that sounds similar to Hotspot.
A new menu will open up. Over here, go to Wi-Fi hotspot.
When in the Wi-Fi hotspot menu, this is where you can configure the name of your hotspot so you can know what your device is transmitting as, and to share with others if needed.
Choose your preference of security, but always make sure its WPA-2 or a similar protocol to protect against others piggybacking off your unprotected Wi-Fi.
Once you have chosen your security, set a password (preferably AlphaNumeric).
Lastly, choose the AP Band. If you are on 4G or 5G, we recommend using 5Ghz, but certain devices like the Nintendo Switch and others can’t properly use 5 Ghz so if you or anyone you’re sharing the internet with is facing connectivity issues, drop the AP Band down to 2.4 Ghz.
With that your Wi-Fi hotspot is set up. Keep in mind that you should only use this according to your data plan. It is generally not recommended to do heavy downloading on these networks. Mobile hotspots are geared more for light work such as checking email or downloading a crucial video when your home internet is not accessible to you.