You want to share your Wi-Fi password with a guest. Perhaps your password is complex, you can’t remember it, or you don’t have it documented conveniently. Learn to let your Apple device manage the sharing.

Apple details the simple requirements and process for this opportunity for iOS and macOS devices.

Enable Wi-Fi & Bluetooth

When one Apple device is seeking to connect to a Wi-Fi network without knowing the password, to reaches out using Bluetooth to see if another local device can share. Thus, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth must both be active on both a sharing and a receiving device.

Also, the sharer’s device must already be connected to the network in question with Personal Hotspot turned off, and both devices must be running at least iOS 11 or macOS High Sierra.

Be in Your Contacts

An address book has more value than just being a place to store and look up identity and contact information. For Wi-Fi password sharing to work, the recipient’s Apple ID (email address) must be in the sharer’s Contacts.

Share Password

With the above prerequisites complete, the recipient may choose the wireless network of interest. If their device is close to yours, you should within a few seconds see a message inviting you to share the password.

On an iPhone or iPad, it will appear as shown above; on a Mac, a notification dialog will appear in the upper right. You can decline this invitation by tapping the ⓧ on iOS or clicking Decline on macOS.

If you opt to share, they will get connected and their device will remember the password for future use. And, if iCloud Keychain is active, the password will sync to their other Apple devices when online so those devices can connect to your network as well.

As always, Wi-Fi requires devices to be in range of a router or access point that is broadcasting a network. You cannot connect to a Wi-Fi network when you are out of range.