You have flashed the latest operating system image onto your Raspberry Pi. You now want to access your Pi via SSH with the Terminal app. But what is the IP?

You can, of course, access your WiFi router and search for it there. But maybe you don’t have the password at hand because how often do most people check their WiFi router? I guess most people still have the default password, which is often on the back of the device, unchanged.

Before you install anything, try the one-liner. Open a Terminal on your Mac or PC and enter

arp -a

That prints every device your computer has recently talked to on the local network, with its IP address, and it is usually enough to spot a freshly booted Raspberry Pi. It is the first thing I reach for now, and it is what both of my build guides tell you to do. On a Pi that has just been set up with the Raspberry Pi Imager you can often skip the IP address entirely and simply use its hostname, as in ssh your-user-name@frame.local.

If that does not get you there — a busy network, a name you cannot pick out of the list, or nothing that looks like a Pi — then bring out the scanner: the Angry IP Scanner.

Angry IP Scanner

Angry IP Scanner is an open-source, cross-platform network scanner designed to be fast and simple. It scans IP addresses and ports and has many other features. I found it super useful for quickly identifying new devices.

Some might call it a benevolent hacker tool.

The program was written and maintained by Anton Keks.

How to use it

For the purpose of Raspberry Pi tinkering, there isn’t much to learn.

Download the version for your operating system and run it by clicking on “Start”. The default settings should be fine. The tool will then “angrily” search for network participants.

Once done, the Angry IP Scanner will show you all devices in your network with their corresponding IP address.

Voilà! You will immediately recognize your new device by its hostname. (The screenshot is from an older release — the window looks a little different now, but the columns and the colours are the same.)

What do the colors mean:

  • Red: The IP address is inactive or dead, or there is no device connected to this IP address.
  • Blue: The IP address is either active or busy and not responding to the requests made by the Angry IP Scanner.
  • Green: The IP address is active, and the device on this address responds to the requests made by the Angry IP Scanner. There may also be open ports.

Simple and easy!

The author notes on his website that while theoretically, Angry IP Scanner can be used by crackers, in fact, it was not intended for doing so, thus the lack of stealth scanning methods.

He asks that Angry IP Scanner is not used as a ‘hack tool’ or something similar.

But for finding an IP address on your network, it’s great!