Fix Wi-Fi Hotspot Not Working (Can not connect) in Ubuntu 18.04

Paper GTK3 and Icon themes

Turning on Wi-Fi Hotspot in Wi-Fi settings is not working very well in Ubuntu 18.04 default Gnome desktop. It says ‘can not connect’ or ‘password error’ when I’m tring to connect via iOS or Android device.

Since Ubuntu switched to Gnome 3, Wi-Fi Hotspot can be easily created by the System Settings utility. It’s however not working very well in my Ubuntu 18.04 laptop. And here’s a workaround to make it work

1.) Press Alt+F2 on keyboard to bring up ‘Enter a Command’ box, then input nm-connection-editor and hit Enter.

2.) When the ‘Network Connections‘ window pops up, click on the bottom-left plus button to create a new connection.

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3.) In next window, seleft Wi-Fi from the drop-down box.

4.) After clicked the ‘Create…’ button, do following settings in next window.

  • Type connection name: whatever as you want (Ji-laptop in the case)
  • Type SSID: whatever as you want (ubuntu1804 in the case)
  • Select Mode: Hotspot
  • (Optional) Set password in Wi-Fi security tab. (WPA & WPA2 Personal in my case)

Tip: you may disable ‘Automatically connect to this network when it is available’ in General tab, or Wi-Fi hotspot auto-enabled in every login.

5.) Finally in Wi-Fi Settings window, do:

  • click the top-right menu and select Connect to Hidden Network…
  • then choose connect to the previous created network.

That’s it. Enjoy!