Find IP Address of Other Devices on Your Network
In this article, we would be dealing with ways to find the private IP address of the devices. The public IP address of all the devices within the same network remains the same i.e. the IP address of your router. In case you don’t know, public and private IP address, it’s fairly simple. We have a detailed article on the difference between Public and Private IP and how to find the IP address of your own device. With that said, let’s start with Windows first.
How To Find IP Addresses on Windows 10
1. Command Prompt
The simplest way to find all the IP addresses in Windows 10 is via the command prompt. To open the command prompt, type “cmd” on the Start menu. When you see the command prompt, right-click on it and click on “Run as Administrator”.
In case you are using windows 10, you can directly run Command Prompt as an Administrator. Just right-click on the Start icon and click on Command Prompt(Admin).
Once you get the Command Prompt window, type the following command. This will display the entire list of ARP entries. In case you are wondering, ARP is a network utility that maintains a track of all private IP addresses in the network.
2. Third-Party App
In case you are not good with the command-line, you can use a third-party app like Wireless Network Watcher. The app scans the entire local network to discover active IP Addresses. As soon as you open the app, it will start scanning your network. After some time, it’ll list up the active connections. As you can see in the following screenshot, it only not only lists the IP address but also presents other relevant information like MAC Address, Device Name, Network Adapter, etc. Read: Useful NirSoft Utilities That Every Windows User Should Try
How To Find IP Addresses on Ubuntu/Linux
1. Command Line
If you are working with Ubuntu or any Linux-based OS, it’s pretty straight-forward to find IP addresses via the command line. We will use the “arp” command-line utility for this purpose. Foremost, we need to open the terminal in order to run the command. To do that, right-click anywhere on the desktop and select “Open in Terminal”.
Alternatively, you can also click on the Activities button at the top-left corner. This will bring up a search bar. Type Terminal on it and click on the Terminal icon once it pops up.
Once the terminal window opens, type the following command and hit Enter.
2. Third-Party App
Another intuitive way to find out IP addresses is via a third-party app. You can install an open-source network tool called Angry IP Scanner. Now, before the begin installation, the tool requires java to be installed. Hence, run the following command on the terminal to install Java.
Next, we need to download the Angry IP Scanner package. Depending on your Linux distro, download the appropriate package. In my case, I am using Ubuntu, hence I have downloaded the deb file.
Next, double-click on the downloaded Angry IP Scanner deb file.
On the Ubuntu Software installation page, just click on the “Install” button. You will be prompted for the admin password, enter it accordingly.
Once you have installed the Angry IP Scanner, launch it. In order to start scanning the network, click on the “Start” button.
Angry IP Scanner will scan the entire network and provide you a list of active as well as dead IP Addresses. The ones that have a green or blue ball beside them are active IP addresses. In case you want to learn more about IP Scanner and all the advanced options, we have a dedicated article on how to use Angry IP Scanner – Beginners Guide.
How to Find IP Addresses on macOS
1. Command Line
On macOS, the steps to find IP addresses are quite similar to that of Ubuntu. To find the IP Address via the command line, we need to first open the terminal. To do that, hit Cmd + Space to trigger Spotlight Search. Type “Terminal” on the search bar. Click on the Terminal icon when the search results populate.
Once the terminal window opens, type the following command. This will list down the IP’s in your local network with their MAC Addresses. IPs are listed in round brackets followed by the MAC Address.
You cannot see the hostname (name of the computer or smartphone) through the command line. For that, you will have to do a host search separately for each IP. For example, if I need to find the hostname of 192.168.1.105, then I have to execute the following command
2. Third-Party App
If the commands sound too much work, you can download a freeware from the Mac App Store called LAN scan. This app will list the IP addresses connected to the Local network along with other details like MAC addresses, Vendor, etc. The app doesn’t list the host name. In order to get the host names of the devices, you need to upgrade to the premium variant by shelling out a one-time fee of $7.
Also Read: Find Out Who’s Connected to Your WiFi
How to Find IP Addresses Android & iOS
Unlike Windows and macOS, there is no native way to check the IP Address of all the devices on Android and iOS. Hence, you will have to download a third-party. The best app to do this task is Fing. It is a powerful network utility that can quickly scan IP addresses on the network. All you have to do is install Fing and open it. Next, tap on the “Scan for devices” button and it’ll start scanning all the devices on your network. Fing is quite smart and it can even detect the brands and models of the connected devices. It symbolizes the device by device icon – whether it’s an iPhone, MacBook, Router, or Printer, etc. Download Fing (Android | iOS)
How to Find IP Addresses on Router
One of the most easiest and robust ways to check connected devices to your WiFi network is through the router’s web interface. In case you have access to the router web interface, you can simply log in to the web portal and check. The web portal address, username, and password are mostly printed behind the router. In case you don’t have physical access to the router, the web portal URL is mostly the PC’s gateway address. To find that, open the command prompt and type the following command.
The default username and password depends on the router’s manufacturer. Mostly, the username and password is “admin”. In case this doesn’t work for you, visit the official manufacturer site to get the default credentials or you can read this article on how to find the username and password for your router. Once you are logged in, look out for the Wireless or DHCP option. We need to navigate to the DHCP client’s list. On this page, you can see the entire list of devices connected to the network with their Client Name and MAC Address. You can also choose to block particular devices from this interface. To read more about it, check our article on how to block someone from your network.
The good thing about this approach is that you don’t have to install any software because you can access your router from any device. However, the only downside is that you need to know the router’s login credentials. If you are in a work environment then you might not have access to these details to log into the routers admin page. In that case, you will have to use the methods mentioned above.
Closing Words
Once you have found the IP address of the devices in your network. You can start configuring your network accordingly. You can start assigning Static IP Addresses to your device, configuring SSH, access your computer remotely, etc.
