Apple is reportedly planning to add a neat connectivity feature to iOS 19 to make it easier to sign into public Wi-Fi on all of your devices.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the small but significant change to would enable users to sign up for a network just the once and then see the connectivity reflected on their Mac or best iPad.
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Essentially, it’d end that faff of having to navigate the welcome screen for every device you own, where you fill out your email address, name, postal code, blood type, sexual kinks and everything else they want from you before allowing you onto a 2Mbps broadband connection, these days.
Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter: “…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.”
Apple already has a feature similar to this for known Wi-Fi networks which enable other devices associated with your Apple ID to recognise and access that network without needing to enter the password.
Furthermore, the company makes it easy to share a Wi-Fi network with their contacts, which works excellently for guests in the home. The public Wi-Fi space is a bit more difficult to finagle, given those third-party sign-up windows, but it appears as if Apple has something figured out.
We may hear about this as soon as WWDC next month where Apple is expected to reveal iOS 19 in preview, as well as its other software updates for the month. iOS 19 is expected to be one of the larger overhauls of recent times and this is potentially a really small update. However, it may prove to be one of the most useful changes overall.
Opinion
Minutes of life can fly by sorting out access to public Wi-Fi, with those finicky and nosy sign-up windows so anything that solves this problem and gives us more time to enjoy the hotel pool or the airport bar is to be commended. Bring on the streamlined, all-for-one and one-for-all public Wi-Fi experience.
