How to Tether Your Samsung Galaxy Tablet to Another Device

Samsung Galaxy S22 For Dummies

Your Samsung Galaxy tablet has no trouble sniffing out a digital cellular signal, so it can access the Internet just about anywhere. Your laptop might not be so lucky. But hey: You’re already paying for the digital cellular signal, right?

So why should you bother getting a digital cellular modem for the laptop, as well as buying into another cellular contract, when you could just use your Galactic tablet as a portable modem?

Sharing the tablet’s Internet connection is not only possible but also relatively easy.

A more personal way to share your Galaxy tablet’s digital cellular connection and to get one other device on the Internet is tethering. This operation is carried out by connecting the tablet to another gizmo, such as a laptop computer, via a USB cable. Then you activate USB tethering, and the other gizmo is suddenly using the Galaxy tablet like a modem.

To set up tethering on your tablet, heed these directions:

Turn off the tablet’s Wi-Fi radio.

You can't share a connection with the Wi-Fi radio on; you can share only the digital cellular connection.
Connect the tablet to a PC by using its USB cable.

Specifically, the PC must be running a current version of Windows (not Windows XP) or some flavor of the Linux operating system.
Open the Settings app.
Touch the Connections tab (if necessary).
Choose More Networks or More Settings.
Activate the USB Tethering option.
On the PC, when prompted to specify the type of network to which you’ve just connected, choose Public.

To disable the tethering option, repeat these steps but disable the USB Tethering feature in Step 6.

Sharing the digital network connection incurs data usage charges against your cellular data plan. Be careful with your data usage when you’re sharing a connection.
You may be prompted on the PC to locate and install software for the tablet. Do so: Accept the installation of new software when prompted by Windows.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.