How to Find Your IP Address on Any Device

Your IP address is one of the most fundamental pieces of information about your internet connection — yet most people have never looked it up. Whether you're troubleshooting a network issue, setting up remote access, or just curious, finding your IP address takes less than a minute once you know where to look.

The slightly tricky part: there are actually two different IP addresses that matter, and they live in different places.

The Two IP Addresses You Need to Know

Before diving into steps, understanding this distinction saves a lot of confusion.

Your public IP address is the address your internet service provider (ISP) assigns to your connection. It's what websites, apps, and external services see when you communicate with them. Every device on your home network shares this single address outward.

Your private (local) IP address is the address your router assigns to each individual device inside your network. Your laptop, phone, and smart TV each get their own private address — typically something like 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x.

Which one you need depends entirely on what you're trying to do. Troubleshooting a connection with your ISP? You want the public one. Configuring a printer, setting up a local server, or adjusting router settings? You want the private one.

How to Find Your Public IP Address 🌐

This is the simplest lookup of all.

Using a browser: Open any web browser and search for "what is my IP" in Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. The search engine displays your public IP address directly at the top of the results. Alternatively, visiting any IP lookup site (such as whatismyipaddress.com or ipinfo.io) will show it immediately.

Your public IP address changes periodically unless your ISP has assigned you a static IP — a fixed address that doesn't rotate. Most residential connections use dynamic IP addresses, which can change when you restart your router or after a set period.

How to Find Your Private IP Address by Device

Windows

1. Press Windows key + R, type cmd, and press Enter
2. In the Command Prompt window, type ipconfig and press Enter
3. Look for the line labeled IPv4 Address — that's your private IP

Alternatively: Go to Settings → Network & Internet → Wi-Fi (or Ethernet) → Hardware Properties to see your IP address without using the command line.

macOS

1. Click the Apple menu → System Settings (or System Preferences on older versions)
2. Select Network
3. Click your active connection (Wi-Fi or Ethernet)
4. Your IP address appears directly in the details panel

Or use Terminal: open it and type ipconfig getifaddr en0 (for Wi-Fi) or ipconfig getifaddr en1 (for Ethernet).

iPhone / iOS

1. Go to Settings → Wi-Fi
2. Tap the ⓘ icon next to your connected network
3. Your IP address appears under the IPv4 Address section

Android

Steps vary slightly by manufacturer, but the general path is:

1. Go to Settings → Network & Internet → Wi-Fi
2. Tap your connected network name
3. Expand Advanced or tap the network details
4. Your IP address appears in the list

Linux

Open a terminal and type:

hostname -I 

Or use ip addr show for a full breakdown of all network interfaces.

Your Router's Admin Page

Every device connected to your network can be seen from the router itself. Log into your router's admin panel (usually by entering 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 in a browser) and look for a connected devices or DHCP client list section. This shows the private IP assigned to every device on your network — useful when you need to find another device's address, not just your own.

IPv4 vs. IPv6 — Which One Are You Seeing? 🔢

You may notice two different IP address formats when looking up your address:

IPv4 addresses are the familiar four-number format. IPv6 was introduced to handle the exhaustion of available IPv4 addresses and uses a much longer hexadecimal format. Most systems now display both if your network and ISP support IPv6.

For most everyday tasks — setting up a printer, forwarding ports, or giving your address to a tech support agent — IPv4 is what's expected unless specified otherwise.

What Changes Your IP Address

Several variables affect what IP address you see at any given time:

• VPN usage — a VPN replaces your visible public IP with one from the VPN provider's server
• Router restarts — often triggers a new dynamic public IP from your ISP
• Network switching — moving from Wi-Fi to mobile data changes your IP entirely
• DHCP lease renewal — routers periodically reassign private IP addresses on a schedule
• ISP assignment — some ISPs rotate public IPs more frequently than others

This means the IP address you see today may not be the same one tomorrow, which matters if you're trying to set up anything that depends on a consistent address.

When the Same Steps Give Different Results

Two people following identical steps on the same operating system can see meaningfully different results. Someone connected through a corporate VPN sees a completely different public IP than their home address. Someone on a mobile hotspot has a carrier-assigned IP rather than a residential one. A device connected via Ethernet may show a different private IP than one on Wi-Fi — even in the same household.

The address you find is always a snapshot of your current connection state, on that specific device, at that specific moment. Understanding which type of IP you need — and what's currently shaping that address — is where the straightforward lookup becomes specific to your actual setup.