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Windows Phone 8 tip: Finding your phone’s IP Address

By George Ponder, Tuesday, Jan 7, 2014 at 8:19 am EST

My IP Address

If you ever have the need to know your Windows Phone IP address, you can track it down through a simple Bing Search.  It is a trick that some of our seasoned readers may already be aware of but those new to Windows Phone may not be.

Just as you can do on your Windows 8 computer, if you launch Bing Search on your Windows Phone 8 device and type, “my IP address” the result will be your phone’s IP address.  It is easy as pie.

If you have a Windows Phone tip or trick you would like to share, hit us up on the tip line.

Thanks, AMir, for the tip!

George Ponder Reviews Editor

""A good photograph is knowing where to stand." - A. Adams"

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Reader comments

Windows Phone 8 tip: Finding your phone’s IP Address

125 Comments
Tonino_Giancola

If you want to find IP address while using WIFI, go to WiFi on your lumia, select the connected WIFI ( usually at the top of the list) and select advanced, your ip address is there.

ricsip

Sorry, but are you replying to my post? WP8 does not support manual IP config, it supports only DHCP IP config. There is no way to workaround this right now.

ricsip

Can you prove it? A screenshot uploaded from that screen would do it... Otherwise I hardly believe Rogers was customizing the ROM to add this OS-like feature, without MS implementing it actually.

Nik Rolls

Device-side IP locking is pretty useless, especially on a device that is likely to often switch networks (unless you can set the IP on a per-network basis). Especially so if the network is running DHCP itself, as you're just asking for eventual conflicts. A much better solution is to set it on the DHCP side, then there will never be a conflict.

ricsip

Did you ever have a situation, where you needed to use a different IP / different DNS server / different DNS suffix than the one sent by the local DHCP server (or even situations when there was no DHCP server in the network at all)? If the answer is yes, you completely understand what I want to accomplish. If your answer is no, gotcha, you have no idea why I want to have this level of freedom on my device during testing networks / IT systems.

Nik Rolls

Obviously you have your own reasons, but when I find myself in that situation I work on simplifying the setup rather than adding workarounds.

Harry Dresden Fan

Complexity breeds flexibility. Simplicity breeds restrictions. A phone should be capable of everything a home PC can do. Changing your IP address is such a basic thing. My old iPhone 4s could do it. Android can do it. Why can't my Windows Phone do it? That is not a good or useful thing. That is losing a feature that peole need. I have been on networks where dhcp was offline due to failure or maintenance, but Internet was still good. Changing IP and DNS settings allowed me to keep using wireless during those outages, rather than using my data plan. Locking those settings away make no sense. That is basic network requirements for any network device. Taking features away is not a forward step. 

Nik Rolls

While I agree with most of what you're saying, the requirement for this is fractional compared to how you're portraying it. While not an excuse to not have it, the number of people who need this is tiny.

krayziehustler

it does show it. At least on my 1520, if you type exactly what he wrote then it should work...

 

much like if you type liters in an ounce you will get a direct answer followed by web results

wpguy

You have something other than Bing set as your default search provider. Open the browser, tap the dots, choose Settings, tap Advanced Settings, set Default Search Provider to Bing. Back. Back. Try again.

Nik Rolls

No, incorrect. Smart Search hasn't rolled out to the entire world, and some areas only have a reduced version of it. For instance in New Zealand I can get Bing to give me the results of a calculation, or show local results in my web search, but it won't show movie infoboxes, or anything for 'my ip address' or 'litres in an ounce'.

brayvefart

I understand but it seriously doesn't show the ip directly the way you see the weather or conversions...mine is Lumia 520!
And yes,I put in exactly what he wrote!

Il Baffo

I don't get the target audience for this article...

If someone knows what an IP is, he probably will know how to get it.

Anyway, in Wi-fi you could go in the wifi settings page and tap on the connection name to have the local address.

teoami

Other people might need their IP without actually knowing what an IP is. For example, when people need to send it to that nice Nigerian banker who wants to give them lots of money.

Richard_Indy

ActiveNet Now, does this and more on one simple screen. It will tell if your active connection is truly WiFi or not plus the public ip address and also your phone networks ip address. I put this app on all my clients windows phone and teach them how to use so they know without a doubt, that they are on WiFi. Because you can connect to WiFi without getting a public ip. The unknowing user assumes they are WiFi connected.

McDaddyMike

Its doesn't work for me. Shows only normal search results. I guess it works only in US as other Bing services and features. I'm tired of this...

Antistatic

Same Here in Norway... Just a normal search result in Bing.
Time for MS to let other countries have the same features as in the U.S.

Mishaye

It's to be expected. It's an American company, so it makes sense that they focus on their home market first.

...which just makes me even more sad about Nokia. With it, died the last significant player Europe had in the phone market*. It won't get any better from this point forward.

 

* Outside of Telecoms and infrastructure companies like NSN.

adrian1338

yes. click in settings on wifi and the connected Wifi :) but hey - it is showing images and videos in a different page now on the search results

Cheeky Ghosty

Must only be for US residents.......on my Australian Lumia 920 it just does a normal web search...... Bah just use ipchicken.com

adrian1338

They want to show off a little bit of "bing smart search" or search interpretation like siri and google. they just fail all over the globe

lindarra

I think it is just another idiotic US only feature. They have the least users there and still every second thing is us only...

tejedor1967

Nokia? In Finland. Samsung? In South Korea. Microsoft? Is located in the non-sense of having things working in the US and not in the rest of the world. Are they willing to conquer Google's crown? Not this way. What it works in Google search in US works in any other country.

kesavanchetty

Not working in South Africa. Hopefully Nokia services/devices will continue to be available in all regions that Nokia supported when Microsoft takes over. Someone should tell them that people also live outside the US.

sholokov

Next time when British make their own OS, they can use the word English for their British English. For now, live with English (USA).

neo158

Not this stupid argument again and that's such an ignorant comment, I'll use the native language where I was born which is English (UK) not some bastardised version from the US thanks. Which version of English do you think the rest of the world has adopted, you guessed it, British English!!

We don't need our own OS, where do you think that the architecture for the SOC in your phone was developed, that's right, here in the UK!!

Nik Rolls

Nice tip. I previously thought I had to change my whole phone region to get it, which messed up the store. This is much nicer.

TripleHelix192

Tried it on my Telstra AUS HTC 8X, on both Wi-Fi and Data, and nothing like what was described (just the normal list of search results). Anyone have a screenshot of what it's meant to look like?

AgentSplurge

In the thumbnail you show bing with the squares on top that you can click to see information on Bings image of the day. I no longer get that one my phone :( Nor on my PC come to think of it. Any idea why? Or even better, how I can get it back??

EDIT: And what's that on the right of the screen? I just have the image and search box, I can't scroll across to the right or left (or up/down for that matter)

Tirinti

I've changed search from English UK to English US and now the IP trick works.

Seriously Microsoft?

Chandan Hati

If you have Moliplayer on your phone, it shows the phones IP to connect the phone with your laptop or PC. I think I am not wrong or am I?

Nik Rolls

Does that require Wifi? If so then it will be showing you local IP for inside the network, whereas this Bing trick shows your external IP for the web.

mikosoft

This should be rephrased as "FInd out the outside IP address your phone presents itself with to the world" ... I know, it's quite a mouthful but it's correct :D

mikosoft

Haha, actually, the IP address you mentioned is "self" address, that means it always refers to the network interface of the device itself. E. g. if I do ping 127.0.0.1 on my computer, I'm actually pinging my computer. If I do it on my phone, I'm pinging my phone, etc.

Inside IP address depends on the network infrastructure that the device is connected to. In home routers it's mostly a variation of 192.168.X.Y , in corporate networks it can be anything from 192.168.X.Y to 172.16.X.Y - 172.31.A.B to 10.P.Q.R (those are three private ranges that can be used as inside addresses).

Also note that speaking of inside and outside address is only meaningful if there is NAT (network address translation) in place - that is, the inside addresses are translated to (mostly only one) outside address(es). There are a couple of instances where there is no NAT - as someone mentioned, mostly happens on 3G/LTE where the operator can assign public IP addresses to the device directly.

P.S.: inside/outside and private/public distinction is not the same. Private IP addresses are special ranges of IP addresses that cannot be used in the Internet. They are only used within organizations or home networks. Public addresses are (almost) all of the addresses that are not private. Outside and inside is a distinction made in NAT, inside addresses are those within organization/home and outside address(es) are those that the rest of the internet sees the organization/home network under.

I hope this is at least a little comprehensible, it is much easier to explain with pictures but since I have no means to draw here words have to suffice.

P.S.2: Please apologise my English as I am not native English speaker and I may have mixed up something here and there.

neo158

127.0.0.1 is known as the loopback address, it's used for pinging your own network adapter.

mikosoft

On a side note, any address in the range 127.X.Y.Z is a loopback address. Let's call that the largest waste of IP space ever.

Also, localhost request are actually processed by TCP/IP stack, not network adapter as I stated before (if we apply strict naming as in network adapter = physical interface), although sometimes that stack is processed on a dedicated network processor on a network adapter card but I'm getting excessively technical here so I might as well stop before anyone gets unnecessarilly confused.

Good night guys :D

shamrock1988

Go to wifi settings, hold and press edit on the wifi u are on. Unfortunately u cannot edit ur ip which is a bit shit for companies trying to control internet access on work phones within their network

BldyIdt

Well you could have copy pasted the RFC1918 and the RFC1631 :p

(Kidding of course)
Can't you use DHCP to assign IPs to smartphones?

Nik Rolls

Yes, seriously why are people locking IPs on the device any more? That's fairly amateur in my opinion, and rife for IP conflicts and issues when crossing networks.

mohitjksharma

What a stupid tip. Its bing search or for that matter any search engine that would give u the same. What's so big deal about finding your address on lumia's. Cant believe WPC is giving such type of stupid tips. Means u don't know urself that its such a stupid tip. Minus 920 man!!!!!

wpguy

You need to have Bing set as the Default Search Provider in the browser's settings. Tap dots, settings, advanced settings, scroll to find.

TuanLVT

Its been default normally, Never changed... I klicked on the Search Button on My device and searched "my IP address" (w/o quotas) and didnt work

dwarfsize

I think that it works depending on location. In Canada here, and only getting search results. Same as i can't swipe left or right for more options on bing either. Sometimes i switch to US, but then i cant use my visa to purchase anything

Cheeky Ghosty

Switched to US English for search and it works. Also you dont need to type address....."my ip" works just fine..... Saved you 2 seconds of typing, thats 2 seconds of your life the article writer tried to rob you of ;p