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Your MAC address is important information. It’s a hardware identifier that helps networks identify your computer or phone for other devices on the network. You can change the MAC address, but it’s not very intuitive. Usually, the only thing that can see your MAC address is your home router, so it’s not really necessary to change your MAC unless you connect to many public networks. It’s also a much more valuable tool to use on a smartphone than a computer. In any case, we’ll show you how to change your MAC address on most modern devices, so you can stay private.

Read next: How to run Android apps on Windows 11

To change the MAC address on most devices, you'll find the options somewhere in the network settings on your device. You can usually change it or at least view the MAC address there.

Windows has a few different methods to change the MAC address. A couple of them overlap as well. Below, we’ll review three different methods for changing your MAC address. The first one only works in Windows 10 and 11. The second one seems to only work with some hardware on some versions of Windows. Finally, we’ll cap it off with the third method that should work on all Windows PCs, but it’s the hardest one to do.

Some third-party apps can do this as well. We recommend checking out Technitium. It’s a solid choice that is also free to use. The UI is a bit weird, but you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.

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

Android is a bit more finicky than other platforms because Google doesn’t let you mess around with a lot of stuff without root access. Luckily, Android devices will randomize the MAC address on their own. Google began doing that starting with Android 10, so you don’t really need to change anything. It’ll simply change on its own.

Since that kind of completes the mission of making your device hard to identify on public networks, you don’t actually need to do anything with your Android phone. It already does it for you.

However, for folks running Android 9.0 and under, your MAC address isn’t randomized. The good news is that you can still randomize it. However, the bad news is that you need root to do it. Here’s the method, but we are not responsible for any damages you incur while doing it.

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

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

Homebrew is a package manager for macOS, and it includes a lot of really neat tools. One of those tools can spoof your MAC address with just one line in the Terminal, and we think it’s a much easier method than the one posted above.

Before you do this one, make sure you have Homebrew installed. Head to the official website for installation instructions and check here if you have any problems getting brew to be recognized as a real command in Terminal. Don’t worry, it’s really easy.

Not only is this the easiest solution, but you’ll also have Homebrew. Homebrew has a lot of power user tools like this that can make life a little bit easier.

Like Windows, macOS has some third-party apps that make this process pretty easy. Below is a list of apps and their price tags that can get the job done.

There are others, but we tested both of the above apps and found them to work to satisfaction. They also both work with macOS Monterrey on Apple silicon.

iOS is a lot like Android in this respect. There aren’t really any methods to change your MAC address. However, Apple does spoof your MAC address for you automatically, starting with iOS 14. You can toggle it on and off, though, so we’ll show you how to do that.

That’s about all you can do. There are some other methods if you jailbreak, but we don’t recommend jailbreaking your phone just for this. The Private Address function does exactly what you need, which is to hide your real MAC address from public and private networks.

Yes, it is possible to change the MAC address on Chrome OS. It’s actually not too dissimilar from macOS and even includes some of the same commands. The only caveat is that your Chromebook needs to be in developer mode. Other than that, it’s actually pretty easy to do.

Up next: How to uninstall Dropbox on PC and Mac

The MAC address, or Media Access Control address, is a unique identifier that helps other devices find your device on a network.

A MAC address is a 16-digit identifier code where every two digits is separate by a colon. So, it’ll like this: a1:b2:c3:d4:e5:f6.

Yes. In fact, that’s why so many people want to change, or spoof, their MAC addresses. So they’re harder to find on public networks.