What does the chain link symbol mean on an iPhone?

Sometimes confusing status icons appear at random times on your iPhone. There might be a person icon next to the time, four dots at the top, or a TFW in your iPhone’s status bar. Occasionally, a chain link symbol may also appear on your iPhone.

That chain link symbol on your iPhone can mean one of two things, depending on where it appears. If it’s in your status bar next to the battery, the chain link means you’re connected to the Personal Hotspot of another iPhone or iPad with cellular service. It must specifically be an Apple device that you are connected to for the chain link to appear. If you’re using a hotspot from an Android phone, you’ll see the usual Wi-Fi symbol instead.

If, on the other hand, you see the chain link on your iPhone’s hot island, that means another device is connected to your iPhone’s Personal Hotspot, either via Wi-Fi tethering or Bluetooth. This could be a phone, tablet, or computer made by Apple or another manufacturer. Regardless, the chain link icon on your iPhone is not permanent and you can choose to remove it at any time. Here’s how.

If you want to remove the chain link icon from your iPhone, it’s very quick and easy to do so. For the first scenario, where your iPhone is connected to another Apple device’s Personal Hotspot, all you need to do is turn off Wi-Fi from the Control Center. You will automatically log out of the Personal Hotspot and the chain link should disappear from your status bar.

For the second scenario, in which your iPhone is itself the Personal Hotspot provider, there are several methods to disable the chain link symbol. First, you can simply turn off Personal Hotspot from Control Center or your Settings app. In Settings, open Personal Hotspot and turn off Allow others to join. This, in turn, disconnects all devices using your personal hotspot, blocks access to the hotspot, and removes the chain link symbol from the dynamic island. The same thing happens when you turn off cellular data directly, which automatically turns off Personal Hotspot.

Changing the Personal Hotspot password on your iPhone, even when the hotspot is still active, can also remove the chain link icon. To do this, go to Settings and tap Personal Hotspot. Next, simply change the Wi-Fi password. You might think that simply removing the connected devices from the hotspot will also make the chain link symbol disappear. Unfortunately, this is not the case. You can only check who is connected to your iPhone’s hotspot, but not remove specific devices from it.