Here’s How iOS 19 May Improve Public Wi-Fi Access
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If you’ve ever been frustrated by connecting multiple devices to a public Wi-Fi hotspot, then iOS 19 may have the answer you’re looking for. According to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is working on a feature for iOS 19 that will make it easier to connect an iPhone, iPad, and Mac to a captive Wi-FI portal while on the go.
In case you’re not familiar with the term, a captive portal refers to those web pages that you’ve undoubtedly seen pop up as soon as you connect to a public Wi-Fi hotspot, whether that’s in your local coffee shop or at an airport or hotel while traveling. These can take several forms; some merely require you to agree to terms and conditions before proceeding, while others ask you to supply an email address or even pay for Wi-Fi services. Hotels may need a room number and name to verify that you’re a guest.
Captive portals have always been a bit of a nuisance, but Apple has done everything it can to make the process of connecting through one as seamless as it can. Many years ago, it began automatically detecting captive portals and showing a simplified browser window for the portal as soon as you connected to a public Wi-Fi hotspot; before that change, users had to open their browser and try to visit a web page before they’d be allowed to proceed, which was an extra headache (and sometimes confusing) if you were connecting to use other apps like mail.
Apple devices have been automatically syncing Wi-Fi networks and passwords via iCloud since 2013 when iOS 7 and macOS Mavericks 10.9 introduced iCloud Keychain as a means of securely storing and exchanging this information, along with website passwords and saved credit card information. This became the foundation for Apple’s new Passwords app in iOS 18.
Synced Wi-Fi networks are great for traditional home, business, and school connections, where a standard WPA2/WPA3 password is sufficient for access. Sadly, one frustration remains when using captive portals with multiple Apple devices: although the Wi-Fi network may be synced, you still need to go through the hoops on each device to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot. Want to use your iPhone, iPad, and Mac in your hotel room? Be prepared to take each one through the captive portal — and you may have to do this once or twice a day during an extended stay, as the authentication on most tends to expire.
The good news is that it sounds like Apple may be addressing this problem in iOS 19 in the form of “a system that can synchronize captive Wi-Fi access details across the iPhone, iPad and Mac,” Gurman reports.
What does this mean? Well, when you go to a new hotel, office building or gym, you’re often asked to fill out a web form on all your devices before you can access the internet. This new feature will let you enter that information on one device and have it synched to your other products. That should make things a bit more convenient next time you need to access a new Wi-Fi network.
Mark Gurman
While it’s not entirely clear how this will work, my educated guess from Gurman’s description and my experience with how captive portal technology works is that this will merely be a synchronization of captive Wi-Fi portal access across all devices for the current connection, but not necessarily for future access.
For example, this would allow you to sign into a captive portal from your iPhone and then access it from your iPad, Mac, and other devices without needing to go through the captive portal on each one. It’s unlikely this will work for every captive portal — ones that require payment or some other form of authentication might be more challenging for Apple to overcome. However, there are several ways Apple could implement this, and it’s hard to say for sure without a deeper understanding of what will be going on under the hood.
Nevertheless, it’s very unlikely that this will offer an “all-access pass” to a given captive portal. In fact, you’ll likely still need to re-authenticate on a regular basis in places like hotels when the credentials expire.
Either way, we shouldn’t have to wait too long to find out. Apple is expected to unveil iOS 19 during its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote on June 9, so if this is indeed slated to be part of iOS 19, it will undoubtedly be revealed as part of that, even if it’s just briefly mentioned in the fine print.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
