The Personal Hotspot feature in iPhones is a lifesaver. It allows you to share your cellular data with someone else in need or from one of your devices to another. This is especially useful when someone is in dire need of an internet connection.

However, sharing your iPhone's Personal Hotspot can also be dangerous. It can blow up your monthly bill or, worse, put you at risk of allowing a hacker to steal your bandwidth. Here's how you can see who's connected to your iPhone's hotspot and find out how much of your data they are using.

Where to See Hotspot Connections on an iPhone or iPad

When you enable your iPhone or iPad's Personal Hotspot, you won't see any changes unless someone connects. Where the hotspot icon appears depends on your iPhone model.

On iPhones with Face ID, you'll know whether someone is connected to your device's Personal Hotspot by looking at the status bar at the top. When someone connects, you'll see the Personal Hotspot (chain link) icon appear momentarily in the top-left corner before it merges with the time display, causing the bubble to turn green. That said, a green time display shows that your hotspot is active.

On iPhones with the Dynamic Island cutout instead of a notch, the time display will remain unaffected. Instead, the hotspot icon will appear on the Dynamic Island once someone connects to your hotspot.

Dynamic Island with Hotspot icon

On iPhones without Face ID, you'll see a blue strip at the top of the screen, indicating how many people are currently using your Personal Hotspot.

It's important to note that you'll receive a pop-up alert when someone wants to connect to your Personal Hotspot. Depending on who's trying to connect, you can choose Allow or Don't Allow from this pop-up.

Permission to join hotspot

You can also check how many devices are connected to your iPhone's Personal Hotspot from the Control Center:

  1. On iPhones with Face ID, swipe down from the top-right corner of your screen. If your iPhone has a Home button, swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
  2. Press and hold the wireless section in the top-left corner of the Control Center.
  3. You'll see the number of connected devices below the Personal Hotspot toggle.

Use Network Analyzer to See Who's Connected to Your iPhone's Hotspot

At any time, if you want to know precisely what devices are connected to your iPhone's Personal Hotspot, you can use a third-party network scanning app like Network Analyzer.

To use it, download Network Analyzer for free on the App Store. Then, select the LAN tab and tap Scan. The app can show you a device's name, IP, and MAC address and may even recognize the device's manufacturer, like Apple.

Download: Network Analyzer (Free)

Find Out How Much Data Personal Hotspot Uses

While your iPhone can't show you who is currently using your cellular data in real-time, it does keep a record of devices that recently connected to your iPhone's Personal Hotspot along with their data usage.

To find it, follow these simple instructions on your iPhone:

  1. Go to Settings > Cellular (or Mobile Data).
  2. Scroll down to the Cellular Data (or Mobile Data) section and tap Personal Hotspot.
  3. You'll see a list of devices that previously connected to your iPhone's Personal Hotspot. Here is where you can check the hotspot usage of each of them.

If you find that your device is using too much cellular data, you can use Low Data Mode on your iPhone to help cut down on data usage. To prevent unknown devices from connecting to your iPhone's Personal Hotspot, it's also best to practice securing your smartphone hotspot.

How to Kick People Off Your iPhone's Hotspot

Unlike Android devices, you cannot selectively disconnect people from your iPhone's Personal Hotspot. This feature can be particularly handy when someone wishes to connect but cannot do so due to an excessive number of existing connections to your hotspot.

Turning off your Personal Hotspot isn't a viable option because this will cut off the connection for everyone currently connected to your hotspot. The best method to kick people off your hotspot is to change your Personal Hotspot's password.

Do this by going to Settings > Personal Hotspot > Wi-Fi Password. Doing so disconnects all currently connected users. You can then share the new password exclusively with those individuals you want to grant access to your hotspot.

Check and Manage the Devices Connected to Your iPhone's Hotspot

The ability to share your iPhone's internet connection with the Personal Hotspot feature can be quite handy. However, if you're on a limited data plan, things can get quickly out of hand, and you may suddenly find yourself reaching your data limit before you want to.

Therefore, monitoring how many users are connected to your iPhone's mobile hotspot is essential. Additionally, you can use a third-party app like Network Analyzer to specifically check the devices that are using your iPhone's cellular data via a hotspot connection at a given time.