How to Change Your Chromebook’s MAC Address

Changing your Chromebook’s MAC address requires Developer Mode and a few terminal commands. It’s a niche trick, but here’s how it works if you need it.

Before you start: Your Chromebook needs to be in Developer Mode, and these commands run with administrator privileges in the shell. Type them exactly as shown.

How to Change Your MAC Address

1. Open the Developer shell (press Ctrl+Alt+T for crosh, then type shell).
2. Type sudo ifconfig eth0 down to turn off your network connection.
3. Type sudo ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55, replacing the numbers with your desired address.
4. Type sudo ifconfig eth0 up to turn the connection back on.

Quick Tips

• If you’re connected over Wi-Fi instead of Ethernet, replace eth0 with wlan0 in each command.
• The change doesn’t stick. Once you reboot, your Chromebook’s original hardware MAC address comes back.

This is a temporary trick that resets on its own, so it’s a low-risk way to test MAC address spoofing if you ever need it.