How to See Only Active Network Interfaces on Macos

Mar 4, 2024

MacOS has a number of network interfaces making the output from ifconfig messy and not easily visually parsed.

Network Interfaces

A non-exhaustive list of network interfaces you might see on MacOS includes

ap1 - Access Point. Used if you are using your Mac as a wireless access point where you are sharing its connection.
awsl0 - Apple Wireless Direct Link. WiFi P2P link for AirDrop, Airplay, etc. Also used for Bluetooth.
llw0 - Low latency WLAN interface. Used by the Skywalk system.
utnun# - Tunneling interface. Use for VPN connections. MacOS seemingly hangs on to multiple utun interfaces, even after they aren’t in use.
lo0 - Loopback or localhost
gif0 - Software Network Interface
stf0 - 6to4 tunnel interface
en0 - Ethernet interface
en1 - Wireless interface
en5 - iBridge / Apple T2 Controller
en6 - Bluetooth PAN
en8 - iPhone USB
en9 - VM network interface
en10 - iPad
bridge0 - Thunderbolt Bridge

List current IP addresses

A simple way to see the current list of IP addresses your Mac has is by using an alias like this.

alias inet='ifconfig | grep inet | grep -v inet6'

Which produces output similar to this.

   ❯ inet inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
        inet 192.168.6.39 netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 192.168.7.255
        inet 192.168.65.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.65.255
        inet 100.101.18.109 --> 100.101.18.109 netmask 0xffffffff

While that can be useful, it would be nicer to know which interface had which IP address.

List current IP addresses and the network interface

This command will display the name of the network interface and the assigned IP address for the active network interfaces.

ip -4 addr show | awk '/inet/ {print $NF, $2}' | column -t

In order for this command to work, the iproute2mac formula via Homebrew.

The ip -4 addr show displays all the network interfaces having an IPv4 address.

❯ ip -4 addr show
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
        inet 127.0.0.1/8 lo0
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ether 74:a6:cd:b6:eb:7f
        inet 192.168.6.39/22 brd 192.168.7.255 en0
utun8: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
        inet 100.101.18.109 --> 100.101.18.109/32 utun8
bridge100: flags=8a63<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,ALLMULTI,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ether 76:a6:cd:6b:c1:64
        inet 192.168.65.1/24 brd 192.168.65.255 bridge100

The awk statement filters for the line containing inet and then prints the last field from that line ($NF) and the second field ($2). The last field is the interface name and the second field is the assigned IP address.

The column -t command formats the output into columns.

❯ inet
lo0        127.0.0.1/8
en0        192.168.6.39/22
utun8      100.101.18.109
bridge100  192.168.65.1/24