It is always annoying and frustrating(but fun after you have finally solved it) when a Google search can’t solve the problems in your life.
Few weeks back, my office mac refused to connect to my iphone hotspot. Rather it connected but it didn’t get assigned an IP. This was a real head scratcher because none of the suggestions online yielded a positive result for me.
I reset my network settings on my iphone, restarted my laptop a bunch of times, restarted my iphone a bunch of times, made the mac forget my hotspot and pretty much everything that was suggested in apple forums, SO, or anywhere else.
I had actually partially given up until I wanted it to work because I want to start using the public transport for my commute.
Turns out for some odd reason IPv6 needed do be configured.
Once I set Configure IPv6 to “automatically”, an IP got assigned and I was able to get my mac to connect to internet using my hotspot.