Want to know the MAC address of your Windows computer or device? To help you, this guide will cover seven different ways to get the MAC address of your network adapter. Some of them are fast, like the getmac command. Others, using the Settings app, require slightly more clicks and transitions. If you want to know the MAC address of your laptop or desktop PC in Windows 10 and Windows 11, please read this guide and find the method that works best for you:
The methods we’ll cover in this guide work on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.
How to view the MAC address using the getmac command in the terminal, PowerShell or command line
This is the fastest way to see the MAC address of all your network adapters in Windows, including virtual ones that are installed by virtualization software like VirtualBox or VMware.
Step 1: First open “Command Prompt”, “PowerShell” or “Windows Terminal”. Then type the command and press Enter:
Step 2: The getmac command will show a list of all your network adapters and their MAC addresses, which you will find in the output of the command in the “Physical Address” column. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell which adapter is which, as the command doesn’t display “friendly” names for them.
Please note that the getmac command can only display MAC addresses for enabled NICs. To find the MAC address of a disabled network adapter with it, you must first enable that network adapter.
How to find out your MAC address using “get-netadapter” command in PowerShell
Another quick way to find your MAC address in Windows
Step 1: Open PowerShell (or the PowerShell tab in Windows Terminal) and type the command below, then press Enter.
Step 2: This command will show you the basic properties of all the network adapters available on your Windows 10 or 11 PC. You will find the MAC address in the MacAddress column. Note that depending on your screen resolution, you may need to change the text size in the PowerShell or Terminal window by pressing Ctrl along with a minus sign (to make it smaller) or a plus sign (to make it larger). If you don’t see the MAC address, just make the text smaller and retry the command.
The advantage of the Get-NetAdapter command over getmac is that it shows the MAC addresses of all network adapters, including disabled ones.
Step 3: If you only need the adapter name and MAC address, copy and paste the following command into the PowerShell window, then press Enter:
This will give you a much easier to read list:
Note: The Get-NetAdapter command only works in PowerShell (or Windows Terminal if you are using a PowerShell profile). It will not work on the command line.
View the MAC address by running the ipconfig command in the Windows Terminal, PowerShell or command line.
The ipconfig command is designed to provide detailed information about your network connections and network adapters, both physical and virtual.
Step 1: Launch Windows Terminal, PowerShell or Command Prompt.
Step 2: Copy and paste or type and press Enter:
Step 3: The command will display all current TCP/IP network connections and detailed technical information about each of them. To find the MAC address of your network adapter, look for the name of the network adapter in the Description field, and then check the Physical Address field, this is the MAC address.
You can easily copy it with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + C
Note: Usually your PC has two network cards, Ethernet and WiFi, each adapter has its own unique MAC address.
As you can see, the ipconfig /all command outputs a lot of information. It can be difficult to find your MAC address this way.
How to find out your MAC address using “wmic nic get” command in Windows Terminal, PowerShell and Command Prompt
Step 1: Another command you can use in the terminal to find the MAC addresses of your physical network adapters:
wmic nic where PhysicalAdapter=True get MACAddress,Name
Step 2: Run the command in Windows Terminal, in any profile, PowerShell or command line, you will get the MAC address of all your physical network adapters.
How to view your MAC address in Windows using the Settings app
If you do not use the Terminal, there are several ways to view the MAC address directly in Windows itself. If your device is running Windows 10 or Windows 11, you can find your MAC address in the Settings app. Since the method is slightly different depending on the version of Windows you are using, we are considering the two operating systems separately, starting with Windows 11.
Find out your MAC address using the Settings app in Windows 11.
Step 1: In Windows 11, open “Settings” (for example, by pressing the Windows key + I or clicking the gear icon in the Start menu), and go to the “Network and Internet” section.
Step 2: Scroll down to the “Advanced Network Settings” subsection and open it.
Step 3: This will show you the list of network adapters on your device. Scroll down and click “Hardware and Connection Properties”.
Step 4: The list you now see contains detailed information about each network adapter installed on your device. Scroll down to the one you are interested in and check the value of the “Physical Address (MAC)” line. You can even select a value and then copy it if necessary.
Alternatively, if you don’t want the full list, go back to the “Advanced Network Settings” page and click on the adapter you’re interested in, then click “View Advanced Properties”.
Here, find the line named “Physical Address (MAC)” and check its value.
Find out your MAC address using the Settings app in Windows 10
Step 1: Just like in Windows 11, in Windows 10 you will start by opening the Settings app and going to the Network and Internet section.
Step 2: Now find the link “View hardware and connection properties” and click on it.
Step 3: This action will show detailed information about each network adapter found in the system. Find the adapter you’re interested in by looking at the value in the Description line, then check the Physical Address (MAC) line for it for the information you need.
Alternatively, if you only want to know the MAC address of the network adapter that is currently connected, go back to Network and Internet and click the Properties button as shown below.
As always, look for “Physical Address (MAC)” to get the information you need.
TIP: On both operating systems, you can use the Win X menu to navigate to the Network and Internet section of the Settings app. Just press Win + X on your keyboard, then select Network Connections.
View the MAC address of any of your network adapters using System Information
Another way to view the MAC address of any network adapter installed on your device is to open System Information. One way to do it:
Step 1: Use Windows Search or Start menu to type:
Step 2: Open “System Information” by clicking the first result in the search results.
How to view the MAC address of the active network adapter using the classic Control Panel
If you prefer the classics, you can view the MAC addresses of active network adapters in the Control Panel.
Step 1: Open the control panel and go to the following path:
Control PanelNetwork and InternetNetwork and Sharing Center
Step 2: In the list of active networks, select the desired connection and click it.
You can copy and paste all the information displayed in this window using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V on your keyboard.
As you can see, Windows offers enough ways to look up the MAC address for any network adapter. If you know of other ways to view the MAC address of a network adapter, feel free to share them in the comments below.
The MAC (Media Access Control) address is a number that identifies the network adapter(s) installed on your computer. The address consists of 6 pairs (maximum) of characters separated by colons. Возможно, вам придется задать MAC-адрес маршрутизатору, чтобы успешно подключаться к сети. Воспользуйтесь описанными методами, чтобы найти MAC-адрес в любой системе.
Об этой статье
Most computer programs/applications use logical addresses (IP Addresses) to send/receive messages. However, the actual communication happens over the Physical Address (MAC Address) that is from layer 2 of the OSI model. So our mission is to get the destination MAC Address which helps in communicating with other devices. This is where ARP comes into the picture, its functionality is to translate IP addresses to Physical Addresses.
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)
The acronym ARP stands for Address Resolution Protocol which is one of the most important protocols of the Data link layer in the OSI model. It is responsible to find the hardware address of a host from a known IP address. There are three basic ARP terms.
Note: ARP finds the hardware address, also known as the Media Access Control (MAC) address, of a host from its known IP address.
Important Terms Associated with ARP
Reverse Address Resolution Protocol is a protocol that is used in local area networks (LAN) by client machines for requesting IP Address (IPv4) from Router’s ARP Table. Whenever a new machine comes, which requires an IP Address for its use. In that case, the machine sends a RARP broadcast packet containing MAC Address in the sender and receiver hardware field.
Proxy Address Resolution Protocol work to enable devices that are separated into network segments connected through the router in the same IP to resolve IP Address to MAC Address. Proxy ARP is enabled so that the ‘proxy router’ resides with its MAC address in a local network as it is the desired router to which broadcast is addressed. In case, when the sender receives the MAC Address of the Proxy Router, it is going to send the datagram to Proxy Router, which will be sent to the destination device.
Inverse Address Resolution Protocol uses MAC Address to find the IP Address, it can be simply illustrated as Inverse ARP is just the inverse of ARP. In ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) Networks, Inverse ARP is used by default. Inverse ARP helps in finding Layer-3 Addresses from Layer-2 Addresses.
How ARP Works?
Imagine a device that wants to communicate with others over the internet. What does ARP do? It broadcast a packet to all the devices of the source network. The devices of the network peel the header of the data link layer from the Protocol Data Unit (PDU) called frame and transfer the packet to the network layer (layer 3 of OSI) where the network ID of the packet is validated with the destination IP’s network ID of the packet and if it’s equal then it responds to the source with the MAC address of the destination, else the packet reaches the gateway of the network and broadcasts packet to the devices it is connected with and validates their network ID. The above process continues till the second last network device in the path reaches the destination where it gets validated and ARP, in turn, responds with the destination MAC address.
Note: An ARP request is broadcast, and an ARP response is a Unicast.
Test Yourself
Internet Schema 1
Connect two PC, say A and B with a cross cable. Now you can see the working of ARP by typing these commands:
There will be no entry at the table because they never communicated with each other.
Blank Entry Table ARP
IP address of destination is 192.168.1.2Reply comes from destination but onepacket is lost because of ARP processing.
Packet Loss ARP
Now, entries of the ARP table can be seen by typing the command. This is what the ARP table looks like:
ARP Spoofing and ARP Cache Poisoning
is a type of falseness of a device in order to link the attacker’s MAC Address with the IP Address of the computer or server by broadcasting false ARP messages by the hacker. Upon successful establishment of the link, it is used for transferring data to the hacker’s computer. It is simply called Spoofing. A RP can cause a greater impact on enterprises. A RP Spoofing attacks can facilitate other attacks like:
Local Area Network that uses ARP is not safe in the case of ARP Spoofing, this is simply called as ARP Cache Poisoning.
The sending computer will of course know its source MAC address but how does it know the destination MAC address? That’s where ARP comes into play. Let me show you an example:
In the picture above we have two computers, H1 and H2 and you can see their IP addresses and their MAC addresses.
We are sitting behind H1, open up a command prompt and type:
You know about the OSI-model and also know we have to go through all the layers.
Ping uses the ICMP protocol and IP uses the network layer (layer 3). Our IP packet will have a source IP address of 192.168.1.1 and a destination IP address of 192.168.1.2. Next step will be to put our IP packet in an Ethernet frame where we set our source MAC address AAA and destination MAC address BBB.
In the example above you see an example of an ARP table on a H1. As you can see there is only one entry, this computer has learned that the IP address 192.168.1.2 has been mapped to the MAC address 00:0C:29:63:AF:D0.
Let’s take a more detailed look at ARP and how it functions:
In this example we have two computers and you can see their IP address and MAC address. We are sitting behind H1 and we want to send a ping to H2. The ARP table is empty so we have no clue what the MAC address of H2 is. The first thing that will happen is that H1 will send an ARP Request. This message basically says “Who has 192.168.1.2 and what is your MAC address?” Since we don’t know the MAC address we will use the broadcast MAC address for the destination (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF). This message will reach all computers in the network.
H2 will reply with a message ARP Reply and is basically saying “that’s me! And this is my MAC address”. H1 can now add the MAC address to its ARP table and start forwarding data towards H2.
If you want to see this in action you can look at it in Wireshark:
Above you see the ARP request for H1 that is looking for the IP address of H2. The source MAC address is the MAC address of H1, the destination MAC address is “Broadcast” so it will be flooded on the network.
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