What Is a MAC Address? How to Find It on Any Device

What Is a MAC Address?

A MAC address (Media Access Control address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network adapter — the Wi-Fi chip in your phone, the Ethernet port on your PC, the wireless card in a smart TV. It's sometimes called a physical address or hardware address, because the manufacturer writes it into the adapter at the factory.

Every network adapter has its own MAC address, so one laptop can have two: one for Wi-Fi and one for Ethernet. Devices on the same local network use MAC addresses to deliver data to each other — your router knows which device should get which packet by its MAC address. That happens at layer 2 (the data link layer) of the networking model, below IP addresses.

A MAC address looks like this: 3C:22:FB:9A:4E:1D — six pairs of hexadecimal digits.

MAC Address Format

A MAC address is 48 bits (6 bytes) long, written as 12 hexadecimal characters (0–9 and A–F). The digits are the same everywhere; only the separators change by operating system:

Upper and lower case mean the same thing, so 3C:22:FB and 3c:22:fb are identical. The special address FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF is the broadcast address: a frame sent to it reaches every device on the local network.

What the Numbers Mean: OUI and Device ID

A MAC address has two halves:

• First 3 bytes — the OUI (Organizationally Unique Identifier). Assigned by the IEEE to a manufacturer. 3C:22:FB belongs to Apple, for example, which is why a MAC address lookup can tell you who made a device.

• Last 3 bytes — the device-specific part. Chosen by the manufacturer so that every adapter it makes is unique.

• Two special bits in the first byte. The lowest bit says whether the address is unicast (0) or multicast (1). The second-lowest bit says whether it is universally administered (0, set by the manufacturer) or locally administered (1, set by software).

A quick way to spot a software-assigned address: if the second character is 2, 6, A or E (as in x2:, x6:, xA:, xE:), the address is locally administered — typically a randomized private MAC or a manually changed one, and it won't match any manufacturer.

How to Find Your MAC Address on Any Device

Here's exactly where to look on each system. If a device has both Wi-Fi and Ethernet, make sure you read the adapter you're actually using.

C:\> getmac /v

Connection Name  Network Adapter        Physical Address    Transport Name
===============  =====================  ==================  ================
Wi-Fi            Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201  A0-A4-C5-9A-4E-1D   \Device\Tcpip_{...}
Ethernet         Realtek PCIe GbE       Disconnected        Media disconnected

On Windows, ipconfig /all lists a Physical Address under each adapter. On a Mac, en0 is usually the Wi-Fi adapter on laptops; run ifconfig alone to see all of them. On phones, remember that the address shown in About is the hardware address — the address your phone actually uses on a given Wi-Fi network may be a private one (see below).

MAC Address vs IP Address

People often confuse the two. Both identify a device, but at different levels:

Your router connects the two with ARP (Address Resolution Protocol), which maps each local IP address to a MAC address. To see your public IP address, use What Is My IP.

Private and Randomized MAC Addresses

Because a fixed MAC address could be used to track a device from one Wi-Fi network to another, modern systems hide it. iPhones and iPads (iOS 14 and later) use a "Private Wi-Fi Address" for each network, Android 10 and later randomizes the MAC address by default, and Windows 10 and 11 offer "Random hardware addresses" in Wi-Fi settings.

A randomized address is locally administered, so a vendor lookup returns no manufacturer. It can also break things that depend on a fixed MAC address — a DHCP reservation, MAC filtering on the router, or a hotel Wi-Fi login that suddenly asks you to sign in again. If that happens, turn off the private address for that one network: on iPhone tap the (i) next to the network, on Android open the network's settings and choose the device MAC under Privacy.

What MAC Addresses Are Used For

• Delivering data on a local network — switches and routers forward frames to the right device by MAC address.

• DHCP reservations — tell your router to always give a device (a printer, a game console) the same IP address.

• MAC filtering — allow or block devices on Wi-Fi. It's easy to bypass, so don't rely on it for security; use WPA2/WPA3 instead.

• Identifying unknown devices — a vendor lookup on an unfamiliar MAC in your router's device list tells you what it probably is.

• Wake-on-LAN — the "magic packet" that powers on a sleeping computer is addressed to its MAC address.

Can a MAC Address Be Changed or Tracked?

The address burned into the hardware can't be changed, but the address a device uses can be changed in software — that's how randomization works, and it's also called MAC spoofing. Changing the address your own device uses is a normal, supported setting — for example, to replace an old router without re-registering with your ISP.

Your MAC address does not travel across the internet. Each router rewrites the layer-2 header at every hop, so websites, apps on remote servers and your ISP's distant servers never see it — only devices on your local network (and the Wi-Fi access point you connect to) do.

Look Up Who Made a Device from Its MAC Address

Paste any MAC address into our MAC address lookup to see the manufacturer from the IEEE OUI database, whether the address is locally administered (randomized or spoofed), and whether it's unicast or multicast. Need sample addresses for testing or documentation? The MAC address generator creates valid random MACs in any format.