How To Change The Mac Address On Almost Any Device

Read next: How to run Android apps on Windows 11 Quick Reply To change the MAC address on most devices, you’ll find the options somewhere in your device’s network settings. You can usually change it or at least see the MAC address there. GO TO THE MAIN SECTIONS

How to Change MAC Address in Windows

Windows has a few different methods to change the MAC address. Some of them also overlap. Below, we’ll look at three different methods for changing your MAC address. The first only works on Windows 10 and 11. The second seems to only work with some hardware on some versions of Windows. Finally, we’ll wrap it up with the third method which should work on all Windows computers, but is the trickiest. Some third-party apps can do this as well. We recommend checking out Technitium. It’s a solid option that’s also free to use. The UI is a little weird, but you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.

How to Change MAC Address in Windows 11

Joe Hindy / Android Authority

Press the Windows key on your keyboard and type Settings in the search. Open the Settings app when it appears. Go to Network and Internet. Tap either Ethernet if you’re connected to your router or Wi-Fi if you’re connected wirelessly. If you did Ethernet, skip the next step and go from there. If you clicked Wi-Fi, click your SSID on the next screen. From here, look for the Random hardware addresses option. It’s off by default, but you can set it to On or Change Daily. Setting it to On will randomize your MAC address to any device that can see it. Setting it to Change Daily will randomize your MAC address every 24 hours.

This is the process for Windows 11. You can’t change the MAC manually with this method, but it still blurs the MAC address from whatever network you’re on.

How to change the MAC address in older versions of Windows

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Press the Windows key and type Control Panel in the search. Open the Control Panel once it appears in the search. Use the search bar in the upper right corner to search for Network Connections. Click the View network connections link. On the next screen, find the network adapter you are currently using. If it has a red X under the icon, it’s not the one you’re using. Double-click your active network adapter. Press the Properties button toward the bottom of the window. On the next screen, find and click the Configure button. Finally, on the next screen, click on the Advanced tab. Then, under Property, click Network Address. Enter your new MAC address. Windows will add the punctuation for you, so if you want it to be A1:B2:C3:D4:E5:F6, you’ll type it as A1B2C3D4E5F6. Remember, MAC addresses must be 12 characters long. Press OK when finished. Restart your computer. Finally, let’s check and make sure it worked fine. Press the Windows key and search for CMD. Open the command prompt when it appears in the search. Type IPCONFIG /ALL and press enter. Search for your network adapter and then find the Physical address. It should be the same as what you set in the previous steps. Note — There is another method that takes you to Device Manager where you find your network adapter and go directly to properties. However, it ends up getting you the same window either way, and the Control Panel method is a bit easier.

How to Change MAC Address in Windows with Registry Editor

Joe Hindy / Android Authority

Press the Windows key, search for CMD and open a command prompt. Type IPCONFIG /ALL and press enter. Note the MAC address of the adapter you want to change. You will need this information later. We recommend writing this to a Notepad file or just leaving the command prompt window open for the rest of this tutorial. Then press the Windows key again, search for Regedit and open the Registry Editor application when it appears. It will ask for admin permission. Give it a go and prepare for some digging. Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then SYSTEM, CurrentControlSet, Control, Class. Once you’re done, you’ll have a huge list of seemingly random values. You’ll want to find {4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}. It’s there, take your time. Once there, you should see a group of numbered folders starting at 0000. Each individual folder is one of your network interfaces. Click on each one and take a look at the DriverDesc to find the network adapter you want to change. Right-click the numbered folder and select New, then String Value. Your new string value will appear in the window. Rename to Network Address. Double-click the new string value (or right-click and click Modify). In the empty box, enter your new MAC address. Again, Windows will add the punctuation for you, so if you want it to be A1:B2:C3:D4:E5:F6, you’ll type it as A1B2C3D4E5F6. Remember, MAC addresses must be 12 characters long. Press OK when finished. From here, restart your computer. After rebooting, go back to the command prompt and run another IPCONFIG /ALL. The network adapter you selected should have a new MAC address. Note — You can go back to the registry and delete the NetworkAddress string you created to revert the changes. The system will warn you about deleting registry entries. However, you made this so you can delete it without causing problems. Just make sure it’s what you made.

How to change MAC address on Android

Joe Hindy / Android Authority Android is a bit more difficult than other platforms because Google doesn’t let you mess with many things without root access. Fortunately, Android devices will randomize the MAC address by themselves. Google started doing this starting with Android 10, so you don’t really need to change anything. It will just change itself. Since this kind of completes the mission of making your device difficult to identify on public networks, you don’t need to do anything with your Android phone. It already does it for you. However, for those using Android 9.0 and earlier, your MAC address is not random. The good news is that you can still do it randomly. However, the bad news is that you need root to do so. Here is the method, but we are not responsible for any damages you incur while doing so.

The first step is to root your phone. Every phone has a different method for this, so Google Search for your phone model, follow the instructions carefully and come back here when you’re done. You will also need to install Busybox. We recommend BusyBox for Android (Google Play) or BusyBox (Google Play). After that, you will need Change My MAC (Google Play). Once installed, open the app and grant it superuser rights. From there, follow the instructions in the app. You will be able to assign your own custom MAC address or have it randomized. To reset — All you have to do is turn Wi-Fi off and back on. It will revert to the default MAC address or a different random address if you are using Android 10 or later.

I wish there was an easier way for people to do this in earlier versions of Android. If we find a method that actually works in our tests, we’ll update this article and put it here. Thankfully, Google has removed the need for this in newer versions of Android, but those on older versions have a lot of work ahead of them here.

How to change MAC address on macOS

There are a few different ways to change your MAC address on macOS that vary in difficulty. We will give you a few different methods to choose the one you want.

Change macOS MAC address with Terminal

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First, click the Apple logo in the upper left corner and tap System Preferences. Find and click Network. In the next window, at the bottom, click on the Advanced button. On this next screen, look for the Wi-Fi MAC Address section to see your current MAC address. You can either leave this window open for the rest of the tutorial or write down the MAC address on a note or piece of paper. Next, click the Apple logo in the top left and, while holding down Options (Alt), tap System Information. When the window opens, click Network in the left margin. On the next page, you will find the Wi-Fi adapter. Look under BSD Device Name to find the name of your network adapter. Mine was en0. Now that we have the current MAC address and network adapter name, we have all the tools needed to get this working. Then disconnect your Mac from your network, but don’t turn off the adapter itself. For example, if you’re on Wi-Fi, disconnect from your Wi-Fi connection, but don’t turn off Wi-Fi completely. Open Launchpad and search for Terminal. Open it when you find it. Then type sudo ifconfig [network adapter name] ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx and press enter. In this command, replace [network adapter name] with the adapter name we found in the steps above and replace xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx with the MAC address you want. Check out the screenshot above to see what I used. Pro tip — Some sources said you may need to run this command a few times to get it to stick. If you press the arrow keys, it will fill in the command again and you can just press enter again. Do this like five or six times. It won’t hurt anything. Repeat step one above to check and see if your MAC address has changed.

Change macOS MAC Address with Homebrew

Joe Hindy / Android Authority Homebrew is a package manager for macOS and includes a lot of really neat tools. One of these tools…