Like many people found after upgrading to Yosemite (don’t you listen?!), I initially found that Handoff and Continuity was, well, broken. I went through periods where it worked intermittently, then it steadfastly refused to do anything once I upgraded to OS 8.1 for some reason, even though I expected that would be the answer.
Anyway, a day or two after iOS 8.1 was released I’ve now managed to get Handoff and Continuity working perfectly, and wanted to explain what I did to get ot going.
One of my main issues was that because I used to work for an Apple reseller I had a legacy Apple id that was somehow limited in its ability to do anything other than buy apps (I needed a second account for Find my Friends etc.). For that reason I’ve always had to use two different id’s – one for iCloud login and another for iTunes and the App Store. Unfortunately, when Family Sharing came along that setup didn’t work, so I had to request that Apple made some changes to my Apple id configuration (which let me tell you was not an easy thing to get across to them….). Once this was done I was able to use a single login across all my Apple accounts, but this still didn’t seem to work for me. Instant Hotspot just didn’t work, Handoff was intermittent and it was impossible to place/receive calls on my Mac and to be frank I was getting pretty frustrated with Yosemite at one stage.
To cut a long story short, after a lot of experimentation, this is the process I went through to get all my devices (iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro) working in harmony:
- Get all of your devices together
- Log out of iCloud (incl. FaceTime, Messages, Find my Friends, iTunes & App Store) on all devices
- If you’ve previously connected to your phone using tethering on any other device, forget the iPhone’s wifi network on those other devices (Settings / Wi-Fi, click on the (i) next to the network and select Forget This Network on your iPad or System Preferences / Network / select your WiFi adapter / Advanced then highlight the network and click the – (minus) symbol below that section on your Mac)
- Restart all devices
- Log in to iCloud with the same Apple id on all devices (and all services; if you use a different id for Facetime you won’t be able to make/take calls on your iPad/Mac)
- On your iPhone you will need to configure devices you want to allow your text messages to be forwarded to (Settings / Messages / Text Message Forwarding)
I hope that following my procedure will cut down on any time you have to spend resolving any continuity/handoff configuration problems – please leave a comment below if you’ve found another solution! As always, I’m available on any of my social media links if you need help with anything I’v written about in this or any other article.
