Getting WiFi Internet access to work on an iPod touch 5th Generation

Well, this seems to be a common problem for people that have older iOS devices and I have an iPod touch 5G that I wanted to use with a Lightning port accessory and thus I needed to see whether I could connect to the iOS App Store and that requires WiFi/internet access. So, after trying and failing many times to connect to my home T-Mobile access point I went on the internet using my Mac to see if I could find a solution.

I found a variety of "solutions" but the first thing I noticed is that my iPod touch seemed to stop accepting characters before I could enter the entire password for the access point (it's a fairly long password, 21 characters). Also, some of the "solutions" suggested that you needed to use a slightly different version of WPA security on your access point/router in order to get an older iOS device to connect to WiFi.

I then tried to connect to another access point that was using the older and less secure WEP standard with a shorter password and that worked, although that access point doesn't have access to the internet (I use it to create a local network for some devices that I keep at home). Thus, I now knew that the iPod touch WiFi hardware was at least working.

Then, I found a thread here on Apple support (that now appears to be locked) that had a final entry where someone said that they had been able to connect one of their older iOS devices to their iPhone using the latter's Personal Hotspot feature.

Well, that DID work, at least with a password that was a little shorter than 21 characters. Then, I tried to log in to my Apple account and to see whether I could access the App Store and amazingly that also worked. The latter somewhat surprised me since I had read other posts that said even if you could connect to WiFi you probably wouldn't be able to use the App Store.

Anyway, by using my iPhone SE III running the latest iOS (v18.3.2, as of March 31, 2025) with its mobile Hotspot feature I am now downloading some updates to the apps that I want to use on my iPod touch (the latter running iOS 9.3.5).

Final word, the downloads and updates from the App Store worked.