How To Find And Change The IP Address On Your Mac
How to Find Your IP Address on a Mac
Finding the IP address of your Mac is not a difficult task, and you can change it from the same panel. You might want to double-check your Mac’s IP address for other informational purposes, or maybe, you have run into the “Another device on the network is using your computer’s IP address” error.
The easiest way to check the IP address on your Mac’s is through the Network panel of your System Preferences. Click on the Apple menu which is in the top-left of your screen and click on System Preferences to open it, or use Cmd + Space to search for it with your MAC's Spotlight. There, click Network to open the relevant options.
On the left side, You will see the various network connections that your computer uses. A green dot would appear next to your current connection click on Wi-Fi if you are using that to view the relevant information.
For a Wi-Fi connection, under Status, you will see a line that says Wi-Fi is connected to [Network] and has the IP address [Address]. Wired connections would show your IP Address in a list of information on the same page.
This is where you’ll see your Mac’s current IP address. On most home networks, this will be in the 192.168.X.Y or 10.0.X.Y format.
Viewing Your Mac’s IP Address Through the Terminal
The above method is quick and reliable, but you can also find your Mac’s IP address using a Terminal command if you want a geekier way. Open Terminal by searching for it on Spotlight (Cmd +Space).
Next, enter the following command to show your IP address on a Wi-Fi connection:
ipconfig getifaddr en0
For an Ethernet connection, use this command instead:
ipconfig getifaddr en1
How to Change the IP Address of Your Mac
Viewing your IP address provides you with information, but what if you need to get a new IP address on your Mac? This is usually necessary when you see the “another device is using your IP address” message, though you can change your address whenever you like.
To change your Mac’s IP address, head back to the same Network panel mentioned above. On the page for your current connection type, click the Advanced button at the bottom.
This will open a new window with many options. Select the TCP/IP tab at the top and you’ll see options related to your current IP address. Next to Configure IPv4, you’ll probably see Using DHCP.
DHCP, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, is a feature that allows routers to automatically hand out and manage IP addresses. Thus, when you connect a new device to your network, you don’t have to manually choose a free IP address for it; the router does that automatically.
To get a new IP address from your router, click the Renew DHCP Lease button. This will result in your computer releasing its IP address and getting a new one, which should resolve the duplicate IP error.
IP Address Conflict Troubleshooting
Hopefully, either resetting and renewing your IP address or assigning a manual IP fixed the “another device is using your IP address” error on your Mac.
No two devices on your network can have the same address, since your router won’t know which is which. This is why you see this message, which shouldn’t usually happen unless your router is acting up or you’ve manually assigned a duplicate address.
However, it can also happen if a computer is in hibernate mode for a long time; when it wakes up, it might have an old copy of an IP address that your router has since assigned to something else. In that case, releasing and renewing the address as described above should fix it.
