How to Check IP Address of Computer and Smartphones.
Apart from being able to connect multiple devices, a LAN is very useful for a lot of things like sharing files between two computers, viewing what other users are viewing on your network, logging into your router remotely, etc. To complete all these tasks, you first you need to find out the IP address of the device.
What exactly is an IP address?
If your friend wants to send you a postcard, they’ll ask for your home or work address. Likewise, your computer has an “IP address”, which is its unique identifier on a network of devices. Other devices access the system using this IP address.
Your computer is given a private IP address when connecting to other devices (such as a router). At the same time, when your device connects to the Internet, it is assigned an additional IP address known as the Public IP. This public IP address is provided by your ISP and is unique. A local IP address (also called an internal IP or private IP) is different from a public IP address (also known as a public IP).
So, any device connected to the Internet has two IP addresses.
- External IP or public IP (looks like 79.343.34.11)
- Internal IP or private IP (looks like 192.168.1.100)
The public IP address is the same for all devices on your network. For example, if there are three devices connected to your router: a desktop computer, a laptop, and a smartphone. All three of these will have a single public IP address that your ISP will assign to your router. Typically, you can find your public IP address by searching for “ What’s my IP address †on Google.
On the other hand, the private IP address is different for every device on your network. The private IP address can be anything in the range 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255, 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255, and 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255. Typically, most routers assign 192.168.0.0 series IP addresses to devices on the LAN. So, if your computer has a private IP address 192.168.1.100, then your smartphone might have 192.168.1.101 and so on.
In this article, we will share the different ways to find the IP address of your device, be it Ubuntu, Windows, macOS, Android or iOS. If you want to find out the IP address of any device on your network, check out our article “How to find the IP address of any device on the network.”
Related: 5 Ways to Kick People Out of Your Wi-Fi Network
Find the IP address of your current device
1. Windows 10/8/7
To view the IP address in Windows through the GUI, you need to open the Control Panel. To do this, type “Control Panel” in the Windows Start menu and click on it.
Once you get to the Control Panel menu, go to “View Network Status and Tasks”. It is present on the web and on the Internet. Click the link to open a menu of active networks.
On the next screen, you will be able to see your active networks just below the View Active Networks heading. Click on the name of your Internet connection. In this case, I am connected to Wi-Fi, so the name of my active network should be the Wi-Fi name. Click the link next to Connections.
When you see a pop-up window, click the Details button to open the network information.
In this window, you can find your local IP address next to the “IPv4 Address” property.
How to check IP address using cmd
Alternatively, you can also do this via the command line and it is just a two step process. First open a Command Prompt by typing “cmd” from the Windows Start Menu and hitting Enter.
A black window will appear, enter the following command and press enter.
ipconfig
Now you need to find an active connection. Presumably, in my case, it will be “Wireless LAN Wi-Fi”. If you are connected via a LAN cable, it must be an Ethernet LAN adapter.
In an active connection, you will find an “IPv4 Address” that will include your IP address.
2. How to check IP address in Ubuntu
If you are using a Linux based OS like Ubuntu, there are some easy ways to see your IP address. Let’s start with the GUI method. Go to the network icon in the upper right corner and click on it. This will open a panel displaying network connections.
Click an active connection and select Wired Settings from the drop-down list.
When the dialog box opens, click the Settings icon next to the On slider. / Off “.
Clicking on the settings icon will open another dialog box. Here you can see your IP address just below your connection speed.
How to check an IP address in Ubuntu from Terminal
To view your IP address via the command line you need to execute one command. To do this, first open a terminal. Right-click anywhere on the desktop and select Open Terminal.
This will open the command line for you. Enter the following command to display network information. The IP address is written next to the word “inet”. ifconfig
2. How to check an IP address in macOS
If you are using a Mac, the IP Address View options are very similar to the Unix options. To view the IP address through the GUI, you first need to open System Preferences. To do this, you can click on the Apple icon in the upper left corner.
Alternatively, you can press Cmd + Space to open Spotlight search and enter “System Preferences” in it. Once the search results appear, click on System Preferences to open the menu.
When the System Preferences window opens, navigate to the Network icon and click it.
The Network tab will open where you will find all your connections. You need to go to an active connection (in my case Wi-Fi). Make sure the Wi-Fi tab is selected and click the Advanced button.
Now that the Advanced dialog is open, go to the TCP / IP tab. Here you can see the IP address besides the IPv4 address label.
How to Check IP Address in Mac Using Terminal
Again, a much faster way to find an IP address on a Mac is to use the terminal. To open terminal, just press cmd + space bar to open Spotlight search. Enter terminal in the search bar and click the terminal icon when the search results appear.
After opening the terminal, enter the following command. ifconfig | grep inet
This command has two parts. First ifconfig will get information about the network, and the second part “grep inet” will filter out the line containing the word inet.
3. How to check IP address in Android
Finding the IP address is much easier on Android. You can do this initially via the settings menu. Just go to your phone settings. At the bottom of the page, click About Phone.
In the following windows, you can see information about the network. At the bottom, you can find the IP under the “IP Address” section.
If you need a dedicated application for this, you can check out IP Tools. Once installed, just open the app. Swipe right to open the additional menu and find the IP discovery option, there you will find your IP address listed next to your internal IP. The IP address written in large print at the top is your public IP address.
IP Tools not only tells you your internal / private IP address, but also displays your public address. It is a general useful tool that provides a lot more information about the network, such as ISP, Host, Location, etc., which is impossible to know initially.
4. How to check an IP address in iOS
As with Android, you can easily find the IP address of your iPad or iPhone in the settings app. Just go to your phone settings. Click on Wi-Fi.
This window will display the name of the connected Wi-Fi and other nearby Wi-Fi. The connected Wi-Fi will be at the top of the list. Click on the “i” button next to it.
In the next window, you will see the Wi-Fi network information. Here, you can see your iPhone’s IP address just below the Configure IP section.
Alternatively, if you need an app to do this, please install “What is my IP / IPv6?” – Fast IP. The great thing about this app is its simplicity, just open the app and it will show the external and local IP address of your device.
Closing words
These are ways to see IP addresses on different platforms both natively and with a third-party application. The public / external IP address remains unchanged for all devices connected to the same router. You can see this simply by typing “What’s my IP address” into Google.
If you have any further questions, leave a comment below and I will be happy to help you.
Also Read: Find Out Who Is Connected To Your Wi-Fi