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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.
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You can connect an iPhone or iPad directly to your product without using a wireless router or access point.
Run the File manager on iPhone, tap on the More button and choose WiFi Transfer from the pop-up menu, see below screenshot. Slide the toggle to on in the WiFi Transfer screen, so you will get an iPhone file wireless transfer address. Connect your Android phone to the same Wi-Fi network as your iPhone.
How to set up and use the Wi-Fi Direct feature of the Android TV™/Google TV™ with Wi-Fi Direct capable device. Establish a connection with the iPhone or iPad. Keep the TV on the screen that displays the WPA key (password) to be input into the mobile device.
It took me a while to find out what is going on, but here is the summary. I hope this save people a lot of time.
Apple are not playing nice with Wi-Fi Direct, not in the same way that Android is. The Multipeer Connectivity Framework that Apple provides combines both BLE and WiFi Direct together and will only work with Apple devices and not any device that is using Wi-Fi Direct.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/MultipeerConnectivity/Reference/MultipeerConnectivityFramework/index.html
It states the following in this documentation - "The Multipeer Connectivity framework provides support for discovering services provided by nearby iOS devices using infrastructure Wi-Fi networks, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth personal area networks and subsequently communicating with those services by sending message-based data, streaming data, and resources (such as files)."
Additionally, Wi-Fi direct in this mode between i-Devices will need iPhone 5 and above.
There are apps that use a form of Wi-Fi Direct on the App Store, but these are using their own libraries.
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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
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.
These technologies allow the accessory connect to the same network as the iPhone and are not for setting up a peer-to-peer connection.
These APIs come close to what you want, but they're Apple-to-Apple only.
WiTap Example Code
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.
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