Hi all, I work on a smart product that, for setup, uses a captive portal to allow users to connect and configure the device. It emits a WiFi network and runs a captive portal - an HTTP server operates at 10.0.0.1, and a DNS server responds to all requests with 10.0.0.1 to direct any and all request to the server. When iOS devices connect, they send a request to captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html; if it returns success, that means they're on the internet; if not, the typical behavior in the past has been to assume you're connected to a captive portal and display what's being served. I serve any requests to /hotspot-detect.html with my captive portal page (index.html). This has worked reliably on iOS18 for a long time (user selects my products WiFi network, iOS detects portal and opens it). But almost everyone who's now trying with iOS26 is having the automatic pop up behavior fail - usually it says Error opening page - Hotspot login cannot open the page
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Networking