List Network Devices on macOS on Linux with nmap

Find devices on network with macOS or Linux. Looking for Windows?

1. Install nmap

on macOS

Install nmap via homebrew

brew install nmap

on Linux

sudo apt install nmap -y

2. Get your network IP Address

on macOS

HOST_IP=$(ipconfig getifaddr en0)

Run echo $HOST_IP to see the result. Mine is 192.168.86.20

on Linux

HOST_IP=$(ip -4 addr show eth0 | grep -oP '(?<=inet\s)\d+(\.\d+){3}')

3. Use nmap to find other hosts/devices on your network

TARGET_HOST=raspberry
nmap -sP $HOST_IP/24 | grep "${TARGET_HOST}"

The | grep "${TARGET_HOST} is optional but helps narrow our search to raspberry in this case.

The above command (in my case) maps to:

nmap -sP 192.168.86.20/24 | grep "raspberry"

So you can see the final result without environment variables.

4. (Optional) Add shortcut to Bash Profile or Zshell Profile

macOS / zshell

sudo nano ~/.zshrc

Linux / bash

sudo nano ~/.bashrc

Add the following line:

alias devices='nmap -sP $(ipconfig getifaddr en0)/24'

Save and close.

Run source ~/.zshrc / source ~/.bashrc or open a new terminal window.

devices