Can one programmatically obtain the MAC address of a device running Android 6.0+?

Question

Can one programmatically obtain the MAC address of a device running Android 6.0+?

According to this,

To provide users with greater data protection, starting in this release, Android removes programmatic access to the device’s local hardware identifier for apps using the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth APIs. The WifiInfo.getMacAddress() and the BluetoothAdapter.getAddress() methods now return a constant value of 02:00:00:00:00:00.

Does that mean it's impossible to get the device's MAC address in Android 6.0+? If it's possible, can you tell me how to do it in Android Studio?

Also, this answer only applies to devices with versions of Android below 6.0

Answer 1

You can use an alternative way to get the MAC addr on a Android 6.0 device.

First add Internet User-Permission to your AndroidManifest.xml:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />

Secondly,

try {
        // get all the interfaces
        List<NetworkInterface> all = Collections.list(NetworkInterface.getNetworkInterfaces());
        //find network interface wlan0  
        for (NetworkInterface networkInterface : all) {
            if (!networkInterface.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("wlan0")) continue;
        //get the hardware address (MAC) of the interface    
            byte[] macBytes = networkInterface.getHardwareAddress();
            if (macBytes == null) {
                return "";
            }


            StringBuilder res1 = new StringBuilder();
            for (byte b : macBytes) {
                //gets the last byte of b
                res1.append(Integer.toHexString(b & 0xFF) + ":");
            }

            if (res1.length() > 0) {
                res1.deleteCharAt(res1.length() - 1);
            }
            return res1.toString();
        }
    } catch (Exception ex) {
           ex.printStackTrace();
    }