nm-connection-editor

Recently we tried to create a Wi-Fi hotspot on Fedora 25 running GNOME 3.

When we clicked on the Use as Hotspot... button  on the network manager it did not activate the hotspot.
Actually, nothing changed after we clicked on the button.
We tried this several times, some while being disconnected from all networks, others with having the Wi-Fi device disabled etc. None of the tests payed out.

To mitigate the problem, we used nm-connection-editor to create the hotspot configuration and then activate it from the network manager.

After we starter nm-connection-editor, we pressed the Add button to create a new configuration:

From the prompt, we selected the option Wi-Fi and then clicked on the Create... button.

In the newly appeared window, we filled in

• the Connection name (which is not used by the system, it is only for us to identify which configuration this is),
• then the SSID (which is the name of the network you will create and connect to),
• we set Mode to Hotspot

Then we switched to the Wi-Fi Security tab where we filled in the type of protection we want the hotspot to have and the password for it.

We clicked Save and then we closed the Network Connections window as well.

From the network manager, we clicked on Use as Hotspot... button and then the Turn On button on the confirmation popup to finish the activation.

After this, the network manager changed its screen and showed a page which had all the necessary information that are needed to connect to our newly created hotspot.

Note:

In case you cannot connect because the password verification fails even though you are providing the correct password, you can always do the ugly hack of setting up a hotspot with no security to get your job done…