Installed iOS 15 on your iPhone and now facing Wi-Fi connectivity issues? This can happen due to a number of major underlying changes or some configuration error on the router side. If your iPhone on iOS 15 cannot connect to a Wi-Fi network, is continuously dropping the connection to one, or if the Wi-Fi speeds are extremely slow, check out some tips to help solve the problem.
The below tips should help fix all Wi-Fi connectivity issues that you are facing on your iPhone after the iOS 15 update. These Wi-Fi-related issues are also quite common on new iPhones or if you have just installed a new Wi-Fi router in your home.
Here are some time-tested solutions to fix the Wi-Fi issues on your iPhone on iOS 15.
1. Restart Your Wi-Fi Router
Before blaming your iPhone or iOS 15 for Wi-Fi issues, you should check your Wi-Fi router. First, restart your Wi-Fi router and connect your iPhone to the network again to see if that helps the issue. The router is like a mini-computer with a CPU, memory, and local storage in the plastic box, running in an operating system. So like a computer, restarting your router can resolve the problem.
It is also recommended to wait for 10 seconds after you have turned off your router before restarting it to Ensure that every capacitor is fully drained, and thus every bit of memory is cleared. This ensures that all the settings on the router that may be causing the issue are reset.
If your ISP has also supplied a modem with the Wi-Fi router, make sure to restart it as well.
2. Update Your Router’s Firmware
Update your router’s firmware to ensure that the known bugs have been fixed. In some cases, this could be the reason why your iPhone running iOS 15 is not able to connect to the Wi-Fi network.
You should ideally regularly update your Wi-Fi router’s firmware as it can improve its performance or fix bugs and security issues.
3. Switch to 5GHz Channel
If you have a dual-band Wi-Fi router, you should switch to the 5GHz frequency and see if that helps solve the connectivity issues. Do note that the 5GHz band cannot penetrate walls as easily as 2.4GHz, so its range will be notably less. If you were already trying to connect your iPhone running iOS 15 to a 5GHz network, do the opposite and connect it to the 2.4GHz channel.
4. Auto Connect Problem
If you have connected your iPhone to a Wi-Fi network, then it should ideally connect to that network automatically when you are in its range.
Suppose your iPhone is not automatically connecting to the WiFi network, and you need to connect to it manually. In that case, you might want to check if the Auto-Join setting is enabled by launching the Settings app and navigating to Wi-Fi > <Name of the WiFi Network with which you are facing the problem> and check if Auto-Join toggle is enabled. If it is already enabled, then try the solutions mentioned below.
5. Hard Reset or Force Restart your iPhone
Like all tech problems, there is no harm in starting off by force restarting or hard resetting your iPhone or iPad to see it helps.
- On iPhone 12/11 series, iPhone XS, iPhone XR, iPhone X, iPhone 8/Plus, press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo.
- On iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus, press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds until you see the Apple logo.
- On iPhone 6s and older, iPad, or iPod touch, press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons for at least 10 seconds until you see the Apple logo.
- On iPad Pro 11-inch or iPad Pro 12.9-inch, press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then press and hold the Power button until the device restarts.
6. Disable VPN
One of the most common reasons that seem to cause WiFi issues is VPN. If you have enabled it in Settings or via a VPN app, try to disable it to see if it resolves the issue.
You can disable VPN via the Settings app and navigate to the VPN settings to disable the Status toggle from Connected to Not Connected. If you cannot disable it, launch the VPN app to disable VPN temporarily to figure out if it resolves the WiFi problem on your iPhone or iPad.
7. Forget Wi-Fi Network and Rejoin
If you’re unable to connect to a Wi-Fi network and are prompted that the password you’ve entered is incorrect despite entering the correct password, try to forget the Wi-Fi network and join it again.
To forget the Wi-Fi network, tap on the Wi-Fi network from the list under Settings > Wi-Fi. Then tap on Forget This Network. You will be prompted with a popup message asking you if you want to forget Wi-Fi Network. Tap Forget to forget the network.
Now go back to Settings > Wi-Fi, select the network again, enter the password, and join the network again to see if it helps.
8. Reset Network Settings
Most networking-related issues I’ve experienced have been fixed after resetting network settings. Resetting these settings flushes the cache and clears DHCP settings and other networking related info.
To reset network settings on your iPhone running iOS 15, open the Settings app, navigate Settings > General > Reset, and tap on Reset Network Settings.
9. Disable Wi-Fi Networking Services
Many users generally tend to solve the Wi-Fi issues on their iPhones by disabling Wi-Fi Networking under Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services. This only relates to your location being used for Wi-Fi Networking, so it doesn’t disable Wi-Fi entirely.
10. Set Custom DNS
If your WiFi connection is slow on your iPhone, your ISPs DNS servers may be having problems. You can switch to Google DNS, Cloudflare, or OpenDNS to see if it fixes the problem. You can follow the instructions in our post linked below to change your DNS settings to Google or Cloudflare DNS.
- How to change the DNS server on your iPhone and iPad
- How to Use Cloudflare DNS on your iPhone and iPad
11. Ask To Join Network
This is not an ideal solution, but if none of the solutions mentioned above work, then you can try enabling “Ask to Join Networks” by going to Settings > Wi-Fi. If it works, you can try disabling it again after a few days or weeks to see if the problem crops up again or not.
12. Disable iCloud Private Relay
There’s a Private Address feature in iOS that helps the chances of your iPhone being tracked across different Wi-Fi networks by using a random MAC address every time. However, this could potentially cause connectivity issues with some public Wi-Fi networks. While not recommended, you can disable Private Address from Settings > Wi-Fi > [Wi-Fi name].
Similarly, if your iPhone is connecting to a Wi-Fi network but the internet is working too slow, disable the new iCloud Relay feature in iOS 15 to see if that solves the connectivity issues.
13. Wi-Fi Assist
iOS includes a feature called Wi-Fi Assist, which provides more reliable Internet connections when your WiFi network becomes spotty. However, this can cause issues, particularly if your ISP has patchy connectivity.
So, you should turn off Wi-Fi Assist by going to the Settings app and navigating to Cellular (Mobile in some regions). From there, scroll down to the bottom, where you will see Wi-Fi Assist. Tap on the toggle to turn it off.
14. Wait for an iOS 15 Update
If your iPhone started exhibiting Wi-Fi issues after the iOS 15 update, it could be a sign of an underlying iOS bug. In such cases, you can wait for a few days or weeks until Apple releases a new iOS 15 update that hopefully fixes the issue for good.
15. Restore and Setup as new iPhone
If none of these tips fix your issues, the last resort is to restore your iPhone via iTunes and set it up as a new device. This way, you start afresh and get rid of possibly problematic customizations and settings on your device. You can follow Apple’s guide on how to restore your iPhone.
If the above steps did not help fix your iPhone’s Wi-Fi woes on iOS 15, you should take it to your nearest Apple Store or Apple Authorized Store. There could be an underlying hardware issue with your iPhone that’s causing the Wi-Fi issues.
Drop a comment and let us know if the above tips help in fixing the Wi-Fi issues on your iPhone running iOS 15 or not.
