How can I add a Tethered iPhone connection in Linux (Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi OS)?

Speedify can use USB tethered iPhones to add a cellular internet connection to your Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi OS device. To use this, your iPhone's cellular plan must support hotspots/tethering.

Note: Since iOS 14, USB tethering isn't working reliably with Linux. The only workaround we can suggest at the moment is using the iPhones Hotspot function and connecting over Wi-Fi.

Prerequisites

On Linux, you may need to install additional packages to support tethering iPhones. The exact packages can vary between distributions and versions.

For Ubuntu, the  ipheth-utils package is needed for tethering iPhones ("sudo apt install ipheth-utils")

For Raspberry Pi OS, the  usbmuxd package adds support for tethering iPhones ("sudo apt install usbmuxd")

If you are using another distribution, try the packages mentioned above if they are available. Otherwise, search online for the specific package needed for your distribution.

Tethering

To start tethering:

  1. Plug the iPhone to the computer via USB
  2. On the iPhone go to Settings > Cellular > Set Up Personal Hotspot, and turn on USB Tethering.
  3. In Speedify, within a few seconds, you will see a new connection appear representing the tethered phone.

Once it appears, you can adjust the Connection Settings, such as Priority, to control how Speedify uses the adapter.

Did you know - you can combine multiple Internet connections at once on your device instead of just switching between them? You get more reliable Internet connectivity - learn how to do that with Speedify.

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