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Guides / Find your MAC address

How to find your MAC address on Android

Android phones have two Wi-Fi addresses: the one built into the hardware, and the randomized one a network actually sees.

Short answer

Open Settings, tap About phone, and scroll down to Wi-Fi MAC address. On a Samsung phone tap Status inside About phone first. That is the hardware address. For the address your router sees, read on.

The hardware Wi-Fi MAC address

Pixel and most other phones

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap About phone.
  3. Scroll down to Wi-Fi MAC address.

Samsung Galaxy phones

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap About phone.
  3. Tap Status. The Wi-Fi MAC address is listed there.
Note: Phone makers rearrange Settings, so the exact wording can differ on other brands. Searching Settings for "MAC" usually gets you there. Samsung's own steps are on its support site .

The address your network actually sees

Since Android 10, a phone makes up a different MAC address for every Wi-Fi network it joins and uses that instead of the hardware one. If you are adding the phone to a router's allow-list, parental controls, or a captive portal, this is the address you need.

To see it

  1. Turn on Wi-Fi and connect to the network.
  2. Open Settings.
  3. Tap Network & internet, then Internet.
  4. Tap the settings icon next to the network.
  5. Scroll down to Randomized MAC address.

To make the phone use its hardware address instead

On the same network details screen there is a per-network switch. On Pixel phones it is under Privacy, with the choices Use randomized MAC and Use device MAC. Samsung calls it MAC address type. Pick the device or phone MAC and reconnect. The change only applies to that one network.

Tip: Google suggests adding both addresses to parental controls, so the phone stays covered whichever one it uses.

Why the two addresses are different

Randomizing the address stops a phone from being tracked from one network to the next. Android picks the random address from the network's name and security type, so it normally stays the same every time you reconnect to that network. It only changes if you factory reset the phone, or if you turn on the developer option for non-persistent randomization. That is different from iPhones, which can rotate the address every couple of weeks.

A randomized address has its locally administered bit set and was never registered with the IEEE, so a lookup on our home page will say "locally administered" rather than naming the phone's maker. Look up the hardware address if you want the vendor.

Note: The full rules are in Google's MAC randomization documentation for Android.

These steps follow Google's documentation .