{"id":380288,"date":"2025-12-30T11:20:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T11:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/380288\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T11:20:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T11:20:14","slug":"your-android-phone-can-bypass-hotel-wi-fi-limits-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/380288\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Android phone can bypass hotel Wi-Fi limits, here’s how"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"glinet<\/p>\n

Calvin Wankhede \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority?<\/p>\n

\"google\"google<\/a><\/p>\n

One big complaint when traveling is that hotels, cruises, and airlines often charge for internet on a per-device basis. The first and second devices are usually provided with free Wi-Fi, but you have to start paying if you want to connect additional devices. Even when I travel alone, I frequently end up with four personal devices (two phones, a laptop, and a tablet), so I have to ration the internet connection among them. The situation worsens if I am traveling with family and friends.<\/p>\n

A travel router slots into this use case by allowing you to use only one connection with Wi-Fi and have all your personal devices connect to the travel router.<\/p>\n

A travel router also helps you deal with a captive portal screen (the login screen that appears when you connect to public Wi-Fi) only once, rather than having to deal with it on a per-device basis. If you have more than a couple of devices, this can get tiresome very quickly. Some devices cannot handle captive portals at all, so they are often stuck without internet if you don\u2019t rely on a travel router.<\/p>\n

If you own a recent Android flagship, chances are you can already use it as a makeshift travel router for the above use cases through Wi-Fi sharing functionality.<\/p>\n

As Kaushik Gopal<\/a> reminds all of us, your Android phone can connect to a Wi-Fi network and then doubles up as a hotspot for your other devices to connect to and share that same Wi-Fi network. This differs from your regular hotspot connection, where you share your mobile data connection; in this case, you are sharing\/repeating a Wi-Fi connection.<\/p>\n

Using Wi-Fi sharing on Android, you can bypass per-device connection limits. You also have to deal with captive portal login screens only once. Wi-Fi sharing also helps re-enable local discovery on public networks \u2014 your connected devices can now \u201csee\u201d each other on your phone\u2019s Wi-Fi network.<\/p>\n

How to use Wi-Fi sharing on Android<\/p>\n

To use Wi-Fi sharing on Android, you will need a relatively newer Android device, though the feature itself is not new. There are older phones\/lower-end phones that may not support the feature, as the Wi-Fi hardware may not support concurrent Access Point and Station Mode, so they will be unable to act as both a client and a hotspot simultaneously. I\u2019ve tested the feature on the OnePlus 13, Xiaomi 15 Ultra, and Pixel 9 Pro XL, and the option is available on all of them.<\/p>\n

Connect your primary phone\/tablet to the host Wi-Fi network:<\/p>\n

Firstly, connect your Android phone\/tablet to the Wi-Fi network that you want to share.
\nNext, you want to deal with the captive portal\/login screen to connect to the internet.
\nCheck if your phone\/tablet has a working internet connection through the Wi-Fi at this stage.<\/p>\n

Enable Wi-Fi hotspot on your primary phone\/tablet:<\/p>\n

On your connected phone\/tablet, go to Settings > Hotspot and Tethering> Wi-Fi Hotspot, and turn it on. The exact path and name might differ, but this is the regular hotspot toggle, so it should be easy to find.<\/p>\n

If your phone\/tablet does not support Wi-Fi sharing, toggling the hotspot will either disable Wi-Fi, or the option to toggle the hotspot will be unavailable\/greyed out when you are connected to Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n

Connect all your secondary devices to your primary phone\/tablet:<\/p>\n

You now need to connect all your extra devices to your primary phone\/tablet\u2019s hotspot rather than the host Wi-Fi network.
\nOptional: Disable cellular data on your primary phone\/tablet. This will ensure that all your connected devices use the internet through the host Wi-Fi, and you won\u2019t end up with a surprisingly large phone bill simply because the primary phone randomly disconnected from the host Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n

Note that Wi-Fi sharing is not available on iPhones and iPads; when you enable hotspot on them, Wi-Fi is automatically disconnected and disabled, so they cannot serve as the primary connection device. You can still connect an iPhone or iPad to an Android device hotspot.<\/p>\n

Travel routers still serve the needs for VPN connections and beyond. While you can set up a VPN on your Android phone for use with Wi-Fi sharing, it is a bit more complicated than using travel routers. Travel routers also have Ethernet ports, which can help you establish a better, possibly faster internet connection if your hotel room has an Ethernet port and you have an Ethernet cable. However, for the basic needs of bypassing per-device limitations and navigating around captive portals, your Android phone will do just fine.<\/p>\n

Thank you for being part of our community. Read our\u00a0Comment Policy<\/a> before posting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calvin Wankhede \/ Android Authority Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority? One big complaint when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,63,192785,203,86227,105,6160],"class_list":{"0":"post-380288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-hotspot","11":"tag-mobile","12":"tag-routers","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-wi-fi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}