How to find your IP address on Windows 11 and Windows 10

A Windows PC has two addresses that matter, and most confusion comes from looking for one in the place that shows the other.

If someone on another network needs to reach your PC, they need the public address. If you are typing an address into a printer, a router's port-forwarding page or another device in the same house, they need the local one. The public vs private IP guide covers the difference in depth.

Windows never displays your public address, because the PC does not have it; the router does, on its internet-facing side. Open the homepage in any browser and it shows the public IPv4 and IPv6 address, the provider and the approximate location the rest of the internet sees for your connection. For a script or a terminal, Invoke-RestMethod https://checkmyip.com/ip in PowerShell (or curl https://checkmyip.com/ip) returns the bare address. If the address shown changes every few days, your provider assigns it dynamically; the static vs dynamic IP guide explains what that means for hosting.

Windows 11

1. Open Settings (press Win + I).
2. Select Network & internet.
3. Select Wi-Fi and click the name of the network you are connected to, shown as properties; for a cable, select Ethernet instead.
4. Scroll down. IPv4 address is your local address; IPv6 addresses and IPv4 DNS servers are listed beside it, with Physical address (MAC) at the bottom.

To see every adapter at once, including the default gateway (your router's address), open Network & internet, Advanced network settings, Hardware and connection properties. That page has a Copy button, handy for support tickets.

Windows 10

1. Open Settings, then Network & Internet.
2. Select Wi-Fi (or Ethernet), then click Hardware properties. Alternatively, on the Status page click Properties under your network's name.
3. Read IPv4 address.

On either version, the IP address appears with (DHCP) or (Static) after it, telling you whether the router handed it out or someone typed it in.

1. Right-click Start and choose Terminal (Windows 11) or Command Prompt (Windows 10). PowerShell works too; the command is the same.
2. Type ipconfig and press Enter.

The output lists every network adapter. Ignore the ones with Media disconnected and the virtual adapters that VPNs and virtual machines add; the one you want is Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi or Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : home
   IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334
   Temporary IPv6 Address. . . . . . : 2001:db8:85a3::1c4f:9b2d:7e11:a03c
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::1d2b:4c3a:9f10:7e55%12
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.20
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

• IPv4 Address is your local address.
• IPv6 Address, if present, is a public IPv6 address assigned to the PC itself; the Temporary one is what Windows actually uses for outgoing connections and rotates for privacy. The Link-local one starting fe80:: works only on your own network, and the %12 suffix is the adapter number.
• Subnet Mask defines the size of your network; Default Gateway is your router. The default gateway guide explains both.

Run ipconfig /all for the full picture: the adapter's Physical Address (MAC), whether DHCP Enabled is Yes, the DHCP Server and DNS Servers in use, and the Lease Obtained and Lease Expires times that show when your address may change. An IPv4 address starting with 169.254 means the PC never got an address from the router; the 169.254 guide has the fix. If names stop resolving after a network change, ipconfig /flushdns clears the resolver cache, as described in the flush DNS guide.

PowerShell returns the same information as objects you can filter, which is useful when a PC has many adapters:

Get-NetIPAddress -AddressFamily IPv4 | Format-Table InterfaceAlias, IPAddress, PrefixLength

This prints one row per adapter with the address and the prefix length (24 is the same as the mask 255.255.255.0). The loopback row 127.0.0.1 is always present and is not a real network address. For the full configuration of the active connection, including the gateway and DNS servers in one block:

Get-NetIPConfiguration

And to pull just the address of the adapter that carries your internet traffic:

(Get-NetIPConfiguration | Where-Object { $_.IPv4DefaultGateway }).IPv4Address.IPAddress

These cmdlets exist on Windows 8 and later; on Windows 11 they are the native tools behind the Settings pages.

To reach a printer, a NAS or a console, you need its address rather than yours. Three ways, from easiest to most thorough:

1. The router's device list. Log in to the router (the router IP guide shows how) and open the page named Connected devices, Client list or DHCP clients. It shows every device with its name, address and MAC address.
2. The ARP table. In Terminal, run arp -a. Windows lists every address on the local network it has recently exchanged packets with, alongside its MAC address; the vendor part of the MAC often identifies the device type, and the MAC address lookup decodes it. In PowerShell, Get-NetNeighbor -AddressFamily IPv4 gives the same table.
3. Ask by name. ping printer-name or nslookup printer-name resolves a device's name to its address if the router registers names, and ping -a 192.168.1.40 does the reverse. The hostname to IP tool does the same for addresses on the internet.

Scanning a network you do not own is not something to do casually, and on a work network it is often against policy. On your own network, the router's list is the complete answer.