A cool new feature in Apple’s latest OS X Yosemite is the ability to turn on your iPhone’s hotspot without touching your phone. You simply drop down your WiFi selection menu and if you have bluetooth on everywhere, you’ll see a special network section listing your device. The problem is it only works about 20% of the time – at least for me – and guessing by the other reports out there, I’m not the only one . So if you find yourself endlessly stopping and starting your hotspot and WiFi to get the magic just right for a successful connection, this simple, but somewhat cumbersome manual approach works for me every time:

• Stop bluetooth on your mac
• Start your hotspot manually
• Select your hotspot network
• Once connected, restart bluetooth on your mac

My biggest pain point (pretty minor) is forgetting to turn bluetooth back on at the end, which just means I’m mouseless for a few seconds when I return to my desk until I remember bluetooth is off.

Hopefully if you’re struggling with Apple’s increasingly infamous buggy “forced-features” this article will help some tiny amount. Stay mobile.