How to find your IP address on a Mac

Local and public: the two addresses

Your router gives every device at home its own local (private) IP address, usually something like 192.168.1.23, 10.0.0.5 or 172.16.0.8. Those ranges are set aside for private networks and reused in millions of homes, so they mean nothing outside yours. Out on the internet, everything behind your router shares one public address: the one websites, games and servers see when your Mac connects to them.

Which one you need depends on who is asking. Setting up a printer, sharing files with another Mac, or connecting to your Mac from another computer on the same network takes the local address. Adding your connection to a server’s allowlist, setting up remote access, or answering “what’s your IP?” from a support person usually means the public one.

You may also see a much longer address with colons in it, such as 2a02:…. That is IPv6, a newer kind of address many networks hand out alongside the familiar IPv4 one. A Mac can have both at once, and both are normal.

Find your Mac’s local IP address

System Settings. Open System Settings → Wi-Fi and click Details next to the network you’re connected to, then choose TCP/IP. The IP Address line is your Mac’s local address, and the Router line is your router’s. On a cable, the same details are under System Settings → Network → Ethernet → Details.

The Wi-Fi menu. Hold Option and click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar. The menu opens with extra details about the network you’re on, including your IP address and the router’s. It’s the quickest built-in look.

Terminal. Type ipconfig getifaddr en0 and press Return. On most MacBooks en0 is Wi-Fi; on a Mac with a built-in Ethernet port, en0 is usually the cable and Wi-Fi is en1. If one prints nothing, try the other. networksetup -listallhardwareports lists which name belongs to which connection.

Find your public IP address

macOS doesn’t display your public address, because your Mac doesn’t know it: it is your router’s address on the internet, and the Mac only learns it by asking something outside. The usual ways to ask:

A website. Search for “what is my IP” and the answer is at the top of most search engines, or open any of the many sites that show it.

Terminal. curl https://api.ipify.org prints your public IPv4 address and nothing else. Like a website, it sends a request to that service, which is how it learns the address.

Your router. Its admin page, usually reached by typing the router’s address into a browser, shows the address it was given by your internet provider, often labelled WAN or Internet.

Two things change what the internet sees. With a VPN on, sites see the VPN’s address instead of yours. With iCloud Private Relay on, websites you open in Safari see a relay address rather than your real one. If the router’s WAN address doesn’t match what websites report, your provider may be sharing one public address between several customers — common on mobile and some fibre connections, and the reason incoming connections to your router may not work.

Find your router’s IP address

Your router’s address is the Router line in the same TCP/IP details as your own, and in the Option-click Wi-Fi menu. In Terminal, route -n get default prints it on the gateway line. It’s usually the first address in your network’s range, such as 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.1, and typing it into a browser opens the router’s settings, where you’ll need its admin password.

When the address tells you something is wrong

It starts with 169.254. That is a self-assigned address: the Mac asked the router for one and got no answer, so it made one up. It means you’re connected to the Wi-Fi but have no working network. In the TCP/IP details, click Renew DHCP Lease. If that doesn’t help, turn Wi-Fi off and on, then restart the router.

There’s no IP address at all. The Mac isn’t connected to that network. Check you’re on the right Wi-Fi network and that it accepted the password.

It keeps changing. Routers hand addresses out on a lease, and a device can get a different one after a restart or a long sleep. That doesn’t matter for browsing, but it breaks anything set up with your old address — a printer, a file share. Most routers can reserve one address for your Mac; or, in the TCP/IP details, set Configure IPv4 to “Using DHCP with manual address” and type the address you want to keep.

If the Mac shows a normal address and the internet is simply slow, the address isn’t the problem. Watch the speed live and run a test: show internet speed in the menu bar.

Your IP address a click away with MacFixes

Every built-in route above is a few clicks or a command away, which is fine once and tiresome when you need the address often. MacFixes’ Network in the menu bar keeps your IP address in its panel: click the readout in the menu bar and it’s there, next to how much you’ve downloaded and uploaded and a button to test the connection.

Your public address is looked up with ipify.org, and only when you click Show, so nothing is sent until you ask. The speed test is Apple’s own networkQuality tool, built into macOS, and it can have a keyboard shortcut. The menu bar itself can show download and upload speed, download only, or just an icon.

One thing it doesn’t show is the Wi-Fi network’s name, because macOS only shares that with apps that have Location access. Network in the menu bar is a free fix, and it needs no permission. The same fix is behind internet speed in the menu bar, set up for that question.

Permissions, and turning it off

More fixes macOS doesn’t give you

One of 47 fixes and 10 apps in MacFixes. Every fix · Every app · Something else your Mac won’t do? Request it.