How to Find Your IP Address on Any Device

"What's my IP address?" sounds like it should have a single, tidy answer. It doesn't — and the confusion trips up almost everyone the first time. Depending on where you look, your computer will happily report two completely different addresses, and both are correct. Which one you actually need depends entirely on what you're trying to do.

This guide is the practical version: the exact clicks and commands to find your IP address on every major platform. If you'd rather understand the concept in depth first, our complete guide to what an IP address is covers the theory. Here, we're just going to find the numbers.

First, which IP do you need?#

Before you go hunting, it helps to know which of your two addresses the task calls for, because they live in completely different places.

• Your public IP is the address the rest of the internet sees. It belongs to your router, assigned by your internet provider, and every device in your home shares it. You need this one for remote access, gaming servers, allow-listing your address with a service, checking whether a VPN is working, or reporting your address to tech support.
• Your private (local) IP is the address your device uses inside your own network — the one your router handed out. It usually starts with 192.168., 10., or 172.16–31. You need this one for talking to another device on the same network: a printer, a NAS, a local server, or the router's admin page.

The reason they differ is NAT (network address translation): your router owns the single public address and quietly maps it to each private address behind it. If the distinction is fuzzy, the public vs private IP explainer walks through exactly how the two relate.

Finding your public IP (the fast way)#

Your public IP is the easy one, because you can't read it off your own device reliably — your device only knows its private address. You have to ask a server on the outside what address your traffic arrived from. That's precisely what an IP lookup does.

The quickest method on any device — phone, laptop, tablet, anything with a browser — is to open our IP address lookup. It shows the public IP you're connecting from, plus the extras that come with it: your approximate location, your ISP, the autonomous system that owns the address block, and whether the address looks like a known VPN or data centre. No install, nothing to type.

If you prefer the command line, you can ask a public endpoint directly. On macOS or Linux, curl ifconfig.me returns your public IPv4 in one line. On Windows PowerShell, (Invoke-WebRequest ifconfig.me/ip).Content does the same. Both work because the response reflects the source address the request came from — the same trick the web page uses.

One thing to expect: your public IP can change. Most home connections use dynamic addresses that your ISP may rotate on a reboot or over time, and mobile networks reshuffle them constantly. If you see a different number tomorrow, nothing is broken.

Finding your private IP on each platform#

Your local address is stored on the device itself, so each operating system has its own place to show it. Here's where to look.

Windows 11 and 10

The graphical route: open Settings → Network & internet, click your active connection (Wi-Fi or Ethernet), and scroll to IP address. On Wi-Fi you may need to click the network name first to reach the properties panel.

The faster route is the command line. Press Win + R, type cmd, and run:

ipconfig

Under your active adapter, the IPv4 Address line is your private IP (something like 192.168.1.42). The Default Gateway line, just below it, is your router's address — useful for logging into the router. If you also want your public IP and DNS details, ipconfig /all shows the full picture.

macOS

Open System Settings → Network, select the active service (Wi-Fi or Ethernet), click Details, and look under the TCP/IP tab for IP address. On older macOS versions this lives under System Preferences → Network.

From the Terminal, the cleanest one-liner asks a specific interface for its address. Wi-Fi is usually en0:

ipconfig getifaddr en0

If that returns nothing, you're probably on Ethernet — try en1. To see every interface at once, ifconfig | grep "inet " lists them all; ignore the 127.0.0.1 loopback line and pick the one matching your network.

iPhone and iPad

Open Settings → Wi-Fi, tap the small blue ⓘ next to the network you're connected to, and scroll to the IPV4 ADDRESS section. The IP Address field there is your device's private address on that Wi-Fi network. The Router field right below it is your gateway.

Note that iOS shows only the local address here — for your public IP, open the IP lookup in Safari. And if you're on cellular rather than Wi-Fi, there's no equivalent settings screen; the lookup is the only reliable way to see the address your carrier assigned.

Android

Android's menus vary by manufacturer, but the two common paths are: Settings → Network & internet → Internet, then tap the gear beside your Wi-Fi network to see its IP address; or Settings → About phone → Status information, where the IP address is listed. On some Samsung and Pixel builds the wording differs slightly, but "About phone → Status" is the most portable route across versions.

Linux

Modern distributions use the ip command. The full view:

ip addr show

Look for the inet line under your active interface — typically wlan0 for Wi-Fi or something like eth0 / enp3s0 for Ethernet. The address before the slash (e.g. 192.168.1.42/24) is your private IP; the /24 after it is the network's CIDR prefix. For a no-frills list of just the addresses, hostname -I prints them space-separated. To find your router, ip route | grep default shows the gateway.

Finding your router's IP#

The address you use to log into your router's admin page is its private IP — the default gateway — and every method above surfaces it alongside your own. On Windows it's the Default Gateway line in ipconfig; on macOS, netstat -nr | grep default; on Linux, ip route | grep default; on iPhone and Android, the Router field in the Wi-Fi details. It's almost always something memorable like 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. Type that into a browser and you'll reach the login screen.

A note on IPv6#

Everything above assumes IPv4, the familiar dotted-quad form. Many networks now also run IPv6, so you may see a second, much longer address full of colons — like 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334. On IPv6, the public-vs-private split works differently: devices often carry a globally routable address directly rather than hiding behind NAT. If your connection is dual-stack, the lookup will show your IPv6 address when your browser prefers it, and ip addr or ipconfig will list both. For most everyday tasks the IPv4 address is still the one people mean.

Which number to hand over#

When someone asks for "your IP," match the address to the request. A remote support technician, a game host, or a service asking you to allow-list an address wants your public IP — grab it from the lookup. A colleague helping you reach a printer, a device on your LAN, or your own router wants your private IP — read it off the settings screen or command line for your platform. Give the wrong one and nothing will connect, which is the single most common cause of "it's not working" in this whole area.

Once you have the number, an IP address is only the starting point. The same lookup that reveals your public address will also tell you who owns it, where it appears to be, and what kind of network it sits on — which is where an address stops being a mystery string and starts telling a story.