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HoRNDIS MacGyvers your Mac to get online with Androids

These days, Macs will only talk to Apple phones to get online out of the box, but you can get around the restrictions if you’re determined enough.

If you want to use a smartphone to provide internet access for a laptop, the obvious way is to create a Wi-Fi hotspot. Look at the list of Wi-Fi networks on any public transport to see how many people do this, then forget about them. This, for the sake of clarity, works fine from Android to Mac. The snag is that this is ruinous for phones’ battery life. There are better ways, but Apple doesn’t make these easy.

RealFknNito ,
@RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

Damn or you could just fuckin buy an Android and save a few (hundred) bucks.

Sorry, I just hate Apple. Happy for the people who got one as a gift or are stuck in their walled garden.

user224 ,

Hmmm, I thought this worked with all modern OSs.
But it’s Apple, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:


FOSS Fest These days, Macs will only talk to Apple phones to get online out of the box, but you can get around the restrictions if you’re determined enough.

If you have super-fast phone, Bluetooth speed may prove a bottleneck, but for normal 4G downloads it’s fine and it uses a tiny fraction of the battery power.

Joshua Wise’s tiny HoRNDIS driver is what makes this work and it’s a mere 46 kB GitHub download.

Install the driver, possibly granting it permissions in System Settings | Privacy & Security, reboot, and you can plug in your phone, tick the “USB Tethering” box, and your Mac will be online.

However, Apple is constantly increasing the security measures in macOS and more recent releases won’t let the driver install.

There’s also a workaround for installation, and this vulture can report that it worked successfully, even with the latest macOS 14.3 “Sonoma” on an M1 MacBook Air, from Brussels’ somewhat connectivity-challenged Midi station.


The original article contains 550 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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