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ios – MFI certification/ Detecting local wifi networks

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  1. The MFI certification process entails that you need to submit a product plan to Apple, you need to use an authorized manufacturer to produce the MFi component, you to follow various guide lines from Apple and finally you need to submit an actual product and packaging to Apple for final approval.

  2. Yes, you do have to submit an actual product to Apple for review. You cannot just send a link to a web page describing your product.

  3. You seem to be relatively vague or unclear about the technical details on what you need to accomplish. This is why it is hard for others to direct you to the right place. In general you can easily let an app discover a non-MFi accessory via Bluetooth and you can definitely communicate with it over WiFi – all without MFi certification.

However, depending on exactly what you mean by “detecting local WiFi-networks” you might still need to go through some kind of approval process, but it could be much easier than MFi certification.

If you quite literally mean that you need to detect all the local WiFi-networks, then the process is quite easy. It’s not possible – MFi certified or not.

However, that’s usually (and quite obviously) not involved in connecting to accessories, such as for example a speaker.

You might mean that you to add a Hotspot Helper to your app. In that case you need to apply for the network extension entitlement for you app. That’s usually very straightforward by simply filling out the form I have linked to, and then waiting a few days for Apple to approve (or not) the request. It does sound unusual for a Bluetooth speaker though.

It could also be that you really want to use the NEHotspotConfigurationManager API in order to temporarily connect to a WiFi network advertised by your speaker, or perhaps to add that WiFi network to the list of networks the phone will connect to. In that case you also need the entitlement described above.

A third possibility is that you really wanted to use Wireless Accessory Configuration or perhaps you want the speaker to become available as a HomeKit accessory (i.e. using the HomeKit API).

I would suggest that you visit this page from Apple’s documentation in order to do the necessary research, so that you can clearly state the technical functionality that you want your app to include:

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1942/_index.html

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