How to Use Your Laptop as a Wi-Fi Hotspot

Have you ever been in a situation where you have no W-Fi router, just one network cable and five people who need to use the Internet? Or maybe you have a 3G dongle that works with your laptop, but leaves your Wi-Fi-only tablet offline. Sounds familiar? It would certainly be handy to share the Internet connection amongst all users and devices without a router, right?

Or maybe this scenario will ring a bell. Many hotels offer wired Internet access for free, but charge you for Wi-Fi and/ or for using the Internet on more than one device. So should you just pay the crazy amount they ask for? Not necessarily.

You can share your laptop or desktop Internet connection via Wi-Fi to other devices, and for the most part, it's quite simple. Mac users face no trouble at all, as setting up Internet sharing in OS X is just a couple of click away, but for Windows users the process can be a little bit more laboured. The built-in options don't always cut it due to the complicated setup and reliability problems.

Use Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 Laptops as Wi-Fi Hotspots

Thankfully, there are quite a few apps that let you use your machine as a Wi-Fi hotspot. Before you use any of these apps, you may want to check the steps on Microsoft's site to see Windows' built-in Internet sharing and see if you have better luck than we did. We do recommend that you skip that and use a third-party app instead, since the experience is usually much better.

We tested some popular apps that let you do this - Connectify and Virtual Router Plus. The latter didn't work very well for us. Our anti-virus flagged it as a threat and during installation it tried to make us install unwanted software.

We didn't have the same issues with Connectify. It is a reliable app for turning your computer into a Wi-Fi hotspot. Before you proceed, know that you will need a Windows PC with a Wi-Fi adapter (or built-in Wi-Fi) to make this work. If your computer does not have Wi-Fi, then you can buy one that connects via USB, such as this one.

Here are the steps to setup your Windows machine as a Wi-Fi hotspot:

1. Download Connectify and install it. The installation is pretty straightforward and when installation is complete, restart your computer.
2. After restarting the computer, check whether it is connected to the Internet. If it is, run the Connectify Hotspot app.
3. You'll see two tabs in the app - Settings and Clients. In the Settings tab, under "Create a..." click Wi-Fi Hotspot.
4. Under Internet to Share, you'll see a drop-down menu. Expand it and select the connection you want to share. We tested this app with a wired and a wireless connection and found that it worked perfectly with both.
5. Under that, you'll see some more options. Add a Wi-Fi password. Click Start Hotspot.

That's all you need to do. Now other devices will detect a Wi-Fi network labelled Connectify-me. Key in the password and you're good to go.

Connectify is a paid app, but it has a stripped down free version. You can create a hotspot with the free version, but the main limitation is that it automatically disconnects every 30 minutes and shows pop-ups asking you to buy the pro version. You'll have to re-enable the hotspot manually to start using it again.

The Pro version has more features and costs $25 for a year and $40 for a full licence. Apart from unlimited hotspot uptime, you get features such as custom hotspot naming, the ability to share Internet from 3G and 4G networks (for sharing USB Internet dongles), and advanced firewall controls (choose which devices can access Internet and personal files on your LAN).

Use OS X MacBook as Wi-Fi Hotspot

Mac users have it a lot easier. Here's how to share your Mac's Internet connection.

1. Open System Preferences > Sharing > check Internet Sharing on the left.
2. On the right, expand the drop-down menu next to Share your connection from: and select the connection you want to share. You can share Internet connections from Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or even iPhone USB.
   Typically, you'd want to select Ethernet, if you are using a wired Internet connection iMac, Mac Pro, or MacBook Pro. If you are using an external Ethernet adapter with a MacBook Air, you'll want to select USB Ethernet or Thunderbolt Ethernet, depending upon the kind of dongle you are using (usually it's USB).
3. Just below that, there's a box next to To computers using: where you should check the box next to Wi-Fi.
4. Click the Wi-Fi Options button below the box. Pick a Network Name, Security Type and enter the password twice in fields named Password and Verify. We strongly recommend you choose a password, instead of leaving the Security option has None. You can leave Channel as the default value unless you know what you are doing. Click OK.
5. If the connection is active, you'll see a green icon and text Internet Sharing: On under System Preferences.

That's all. You'll be able to use the Internet on other devices now by connecting to the network you specified under Network Name.

That is how you turn your PC or Mac into a Wi-Fi hotspot. Are there any other ways that you used to get this done? Let us know via the comments. As always, you can read more tutorials in our How To categories.