Would you know how to find out the MAC address of the computers connected to your home Wi-Fi network? In this tutorial we are going to show you several ways to find out the MAC address of any WiFi device, regardless of the router you are using or the operator you are using. If we want to carry out this task, we can do it in several ways in Android from Settings, with Android network apps or in Windows 10 by commands.
What is the MAC address and what can it do for us
The MAC address comes from the acronym for Media Access Control . It is a 48-bit identifier (6 blocks of two hexadecimal characters (8 bits)) that uniquely corresponds to a card or network device. It is also known as a physical address , and it is also unique for each device . It is determined and configured by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (the last 24 bits) and the manufacturer (first 24 bits) using the “organizationally unique identifier”.
The MAC allows us to identify a specific computer always and at all times, regardless of the IP it has at that time since it is unique for each device. Thus, knowing the MAC of a device we could:
- Restrict Internet access.
- Configure bandwidths and priorities on the router.
- Open ports.
- Configure a DHCP, such as, for example, to assign a local IP that is always the same to a specific MAC.
In some routers in the Wi-Fi section we have MAC filtering available, although in terms of security it is not much use, we could enable it to put a small barrier to someone who wants to access the network. One way to configure it would be to add our MACs and we put that only those can be connected. In the event that someone connected using our password, they would not have access to the network. This would happen because it is not within the list of MAC allowed to enter that Wi-Fi network.
Know the MAC from Android in “Settings”
In the «Settings» of our Android device we can also know our MAC. The process is similar with all manufacturers, although names sometimes change somewhat. The process would be the following:
- Let’s go to Settings.
- Phone information.
- State.
Once all these steps have been done, in the red box you have the MAC marked:
Know the MAC from Android using different apps
Surely, if we want to know the MAC address of any WiFi device, one of the easiest ways is to do it using an Android app. We are going to put some examples. Currently, most modern versions of Android require permissions to work. In this case, what they usually ask us for is the location permit . An important question that some will ask is if it could work without activating it, the answer is yes, but with limitations. For example, it would not show the name of our Wi-Fi network.
As a first example we are going to take NetX Network Tools . Here you have its main screen:
If we do not grant the location permission, instead of putting our network name, it will put unknown ssid . That is why I recommend accepting that permission and the name of your Wi-Fi network will appear. In the image above, it indicates that it is made up of four teams and of each one they offer in this order:
- Host or computer name.
- Local IP.
- MAC address, which is what we are looking for.
- Device manufacturer.
You can download the app from here:
The second that we are going to use is Network Scanner that you can download from the Google Play Store from here:
This is the main screen of the app.
In this case under the local IP you can see the MAC. As he has not been able to identify the manufacturer of our mobile, he has put “This device”. That is where we have to look for it. We will do the last example with WiFi Monitor , it is a free Android app that will allow us to analyze the status of a Wi-Fi network. Among those parameters under the local IP we have the MAC.
If you decide to try it, you can download it from the Play Store from this link:
In this article we have made manuals of all of them in case you are interested in knowing them in depth.
Know the MAC of any device with Windows 10
The method that we are going to discuss now, serves both for PCs connected by network cable, and by Wi-Fi in Windows 10. The only thing that must be taken into account when carrying out the operation, is to look for the name of your de Wi-Fi network adapter that you are using at the moment. The procedure that we are going to follow is:
- Let’s start .
- We write cmd .
- A Command Prompt window will appear to enter commands.
- We put ipconfig / all
By doing so we will obtain the following results:
All the results related to the network configuration of our computer will appear. What we should look for is a section called the physical address of our Wifi network adapter. This will be the MAC of our Wi-Fi network adapter.
