Keynote remote without Wi-Fi

TidBITS Talk
1

I’m due to give a Keynote presentation on Monday evening. I want to use my phone to control Keynote on my MacBook Pro (Intel) 16" but there’s no wifi at the location (it’s a photo club in a church hall).

The laptop is running up-to-date Ventura and the iPhone is a 13 Pro, also fully up-to-date.

The suggested approach seems to be to create a wifi network on the laptop and connect the phone to it. I can create an ad hoc network on the MacBook and it shows up on the phone, but the phone won’t complete the connection when select that network.

I get a “not connected to the Internet” dialog and say proceed. It gets as far as discovering that the ad hoc network is unsecured, but then just hangs, without connecting: the 5G icon remains in the phone’s top bar, not the wifi icon, and the spinning wheel next to the network name remains. The IP address is a 169.x.x.x and of course Keynote on the phone doesn’t see Keynote on the Mac.

Any idea how I can get the phone to connect to the MacBook’s network? Or any other suggestions?

2

Maybe go the other way: connect the MBP to the iPhone as a hot spot???
Or try Bluetooth?

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3

Tried that. Doesn’t work. Bluetooth isn’t enough for Keynote. Keynote mobile insists on the phone and the MacBook being connected to the same wifi network. I don’t need an Internet connection.

I think I have a fix, though. I’ll take an old router from my home, which will generate a wifi network.

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