How to Turn Off the Mobile Hotspot in Windows 10 and Windows 11
If you are running Connectify Hotspot together with the Mobile hotspot built into Windows 10 and Windows 11, you may encounter some issues, such as not being able to use Connectify Hotspot to broadcast the Wi-Fi hotspot or not being able to connect a device to the hotspot generated from your computer.
Connectify Hotspot creates its hotspot with Wi-Fi Direct by default. If it can't, it shows this error when you click Start hotspot:
Wi-Fi Direct could not be started. If you are running another application that uses Wi-Fi Direct, please stop it and try again. If you are not, please restart your computer and try again.
Windows' Mobile hotspot is one of the things that can cause this.
In order to fully benefit from the features of Connectify Hotspot, we strongly recommend turning off Mobile hotspot in Windows. Here's how to do that:
Windows 11
- Open Settings and click Network & internet.
- Find Mobile hotspot in the list and make sure its switch is set to Off.
You can also turn it off from quick settings: press Windows+A and make sure the Mobile hotspot button isn't highlighted.
Windows 10
- Open Settings and click Network & Internet.
- Click Mobile hotspot on the left side.
- Make sure the slider on the right side is set to Off.
Then click Start hotspot in Connectify Hotspot again. If you still get the error, see I get 'Wi-Fi Direct could not be started' or 'Microsoft Hosted Network could not be started'.