[ios] Wi-Fi Direct and iOS Support

I want to use Wi-Fi Direct in a solution, but I'm unsure which platforms support it.

Does Wi-Fi Direct depend on iPhone/iOS version?

Can I develop an application with Wi-Fi Direct feature on a iPhone 4s with iOS 8.

This question is related to ios iphone wifi-direct

The answer is


The official list of current iOS Wi-Fi Management APIs

There is no Wi-Fi Direct type of connection available. The primary issue being that Apple does not allow programmatic setting of the Wi-Fi network SSID and password. However, this improves substantially in iOS 11 where you can at least prompt the user to switch to another WiFi network.

QA1942 - iOS Wi-Fi Management APIs

Entitlement option

This technology is useful if you want to provide a list of Wi-Fi networks that a user might want to connect to in a manager type app. It requires that you apply for this entitlement with Apple and the email address is in the documentation.

MFi Program options

These technologies allow the accessory connect to the same network as the iPhone and are not for setting up a peer-to-peer connection.

  • Wireless Accessory Configuration (WAC)
  • HomeKit

Peer-to-peer between Apple devices

These APIs come close to what you want, but they're Apple-to-Apple only.

WiTap Example Code

iOS 11 NEHotspotConfiguration

Brought up at WWDC 2017 Advances in Networking, Part 1 is NEHotspotConfiguration which allows the app to specify and prompt to connect to a specific network.


According to this thread:

The peer-to-peer Wi-Fi implemented by iOS (and recent versions of OS X) is not compatible with Wi-Fi Direct. Note Just as an aside, you can access peer-to-peer Wi-Fi without using Multipeer Connectivity. The underlying technology is Bonjour + TCP/IP, and you can access that directly from your app. The WiTap sample code shows how.