macadress

Fundamentals

How to find your MAC address

The menu names shift a little between OS versions; the command-line methods below don't, so they're the ones worth remembering.

Every device has more than one MAC address if it has more than one network interface, Wi-Fi and Ethernet are different addresses on the same laptop. What follows finds whichever interface you're currently asking about.

Windows

Fastest and most reliable: open Command Prompt and run

ipconfig /all

Look for Physical Address under the adapter you care about (Wi-Fi or Ethernet). The same information is in Settings > Network & Internet > [Wi-Fi or Ethernet] > Properties, listed as Physical address (MAC), if you'd rather click through than type.

macOS

ifconfig en0 | grep ether

en0 is usually Wi-Fi and en1 Ethernet, but that can vary by Mac; run ifconfig alone first to see every interface if you're not sure which is which. Via the menus, it's under System Settings > Wi-Fi > Details > Hardware (or the equivalent Ethernet entry), labeled Wi-Fi Address or similar. Older macOS versions call this app System Preferences instead of System Settings, but the field is in the same place either way.

Linux

ip link show

Each interface's address is on the link/ether line. ifconfig (on distributions that still ship it) shows the same thing under HWaddr or ether.

iOS (iPhone/iPad)

Settings > General > About, scroll down to Wi-Fi Address. Note that this is very likely a randomized address, not the hardware's real one, by default since iOS 14.

Android

Settings > About Phone > Status (sometimes nested under "Status information"), look for Wi-Fi MAC Address. The exact path shifts a bit by manufacturer skin, but it's reliably somewhere under About Phone. As with iOS, recent Android versions show a randomized address here by default for most networks, not the hardware original.

A router's connected-device list

Looking for a different device's MAC address, not your own, say, to set up a DHCP reservation or a MAC allow-list? Your router's admin page almost always has a "Connected Devices," "DHCP Clients," or "Attached Devices" list showing the MAC address of everything currently on the network, no access to the device itself required.

Once you've got the address, look it up here to see the vendor, whether it looks randomized, and its full technical breakdown; or if you've got a whole batch of them from a log file or a command's output, the extract tool pulls out every one at once.

More guides

What is a MAC address? Every network interface, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, has one. Here's what it is, in plain terms, before the deeper dive into how it's structured. How MAC addresses work Forty-eight bits, six bytes, and two of those bits mean something you can read off directly. Here's how the whole address is put together. MAC vs. IP address Both identify a device on a network. Neither does the other one's job, and mixing them up is the source of a lot of confused troubleshooting. MAC randomization Your phone almost certainly isn't broadcasting its real MAC address anymore. Here's why that started, and how to tell the difference.