My iPhone Hates My WiFi
Sometimes, my iPhone disconnects from my wifi. The little icon disappears from the status bar. Then, when I go to the settings app to reconnect, it claims that it’s still connected to the wifi. Maddening. What follows is an infuriating ritual of flicking the airplane mode and wifi switches on and off until it will stay connected. Sometimes it will connect, showing a strong signal in the status bar, only for it to immediately disappear. It probably takes 3-5 iterations on average to get it to stick. I am not aware of any way to reproduce the issue, which has greatly hindered my ability to resolve it. I have not been taking notes as thoroughly as I should have. The bug is intermittent. On a ‘bad day’ I will be disconnected from the wifi a handful of times.
It started, I think, with iOS 18. This is one of the things I really wish I’d written down. The bug impacts my partner’s iPhone, too.
The network itself isn’t going down. My partner will tell me their phone has disconnected from the wifi while my phone remains perfectly connected. Some Android phones have issues with the network. My MacBook seems largely immune to its issues. Ethernet, of course, remains reliable as ever.
I bought a new Ruckus R350 access point to see if that would help. It didn’t. I have not tried replacing my modem, but my ISP did it anyways unprompted. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to BYOD; it’s a big box in a frankly inconvenient spot in my living room with one of those big “it’s a felony to look at this” stickers on it.
Do you, reader, have any ideas for debugging this issue, or even reproducing it? Are you trapped in this strange predicament with me? Drop me a line.