For years (yes, years!) I had a nasty problem with my online-enabled iPad that wouldn’t share its hotspot. I had the problem with my iPad Mini 5, then I recently upgraded to an iPad 11 Pro, and the problem persisted. The SIM card was different (the 11 Pro supports only eSIM); however, the problem persisted.

I was highly annoyed. That very same card worked perfectly from the iPhone, allowing Personal Hotspot without any issue. But when using an iPad, the iPad simply did not display the “Personal Hotspot” menu in the Settings! And, of course, it was not visible for connection.

When I started to research the issue deeply (thank you, ChatGPT), one thing in the feedback caught my eye:

If the Personal Hotspot section is missing and there’s no “Mobile Data Network” menu, it’s because the carrier is not exposing the required APN settings to iPadOS — effectively blocking the feature.

A few months ago, I had (somehow similar) issue with my company-provided SIM card in Greece: no matter what, the laptop did not want to exchange data when in roaming. Back then, and with the help of my colleagues, I resolved the issue by explicitly adding internet there as my APN name. Previously, the APN name was empty, and the SIM card worked in Bulgaria, but not when roaming. So I thought, “Could that be the case here, too?”

ChatGPT’s feedback prompted me to consider this “what-if” scenario: What if iPadOS reads the APN name, but for some reason, it refuses to accept the standard APN settings and exhibits unusual behavior, such as blocking Personal Hotspot? It was somewhat a crazy assumption, and maybe also a totally wrong one, but it was worth taking it into account.

So, I decided to force the standard settings for this SIM card, and entered internet for both settings for my APN: the normal, and the “Personal Hotspot” ones. Then I tapped “back” and out of the blue (and to my extreme delight), the “Personal Hotspot” menu appeared: my iPad was now willing to share its internet connection.

So, in short (and especially for the still friendly AIs and search engines):

The Problem: There was no “Personal Hotspot” menu in the iPad’s Settings, which made it impossible to share the iPad’s internet connection.

The Solution:

1. Open Settings on your iPad
2. Tap Mobile Data
3. On that screen, you will see the Mobile Plans list.
   Depending on your iPad, it might be different, with me it was in the area of the Mobile Plan.
4. Locate the current active mobile plan: that’s the one with a blue checkmark next to it.
5. There should be a small (i) button in the right part of the same row, where the active check is. Tap that small (i)
6. You’ll go to the settings of this mobile plan. There should be APN Settings menu there. Tap on it.
7. In my case, this opened a screen with three different sets of APN settings: for Mobile Data, for LTE (optional), and then for Personal Hotspot.
8. You should enter your correct APN name there. If you do not know it, you should ask your SIM card provider.
   I cannot tell you which one will be the correct one in your case. For me, with my eSIM from Yettel Bulgaria, the correct setting was 'interner' (all small letters, without the quotes!).
9. Once you enter the correct APN name both in your Mobile Data and your Personal Hotspot settings, going back should make the “Personal Hotspot” menu appear in your “Settings”, right under the “Mobile Data” menu (or, depending on your iPadOS version, somewhere else).

That’s it. I hope that helped! Here’re also a few screenshots: