How can I get the local IP address in macOS to use in a script?

I need to figure out the local IP address of Github runner, which uses macOS 11. I need this for my integration tests.

I tried:

LOCAL_IP=ifconfig | grep "inet " | grep -Fv 127.0.0.1 | awk '{print $2}'
SERVER_URL="http://${LOCAL_IP}:5000"

However, this gave me just: http://:5000

Which is the correct command for this?

Solution 1:

LOCAL_IP=ifconfig | grep "inet " | grep -Fv 127.0.0.1 | awk '{print $2}'

sets the variable LOCAL_IP to ifconfig to run an empty command, and sends the empty output of that empty command to the pipe built of | grep "inet " | grep -Fv 127.0.0.1 | awk '{print $2}'. So LOCAL_IP is never set afterwards.

What you probably want to run is

LOCAL_IP=$(ifconfig | grep 'inet ' | grep -Fv 127.0.0.1 | awk '{print $2}')

which can be simplified to

LOCAL_IP=$(ifconfig | awk '/inet /&&!/127.0.0.1/{print $2})

Unfortunately this will return two rows on Macs which are connected over both Ethernet and WLAN. So it's probably safer to use

LOCAL_IP=$(ifconfig | awk '/inet /&&!/127.0.0.1/{print $2;exit})

which will pick the first network interface/IP address found.

Solution 2:

Here is another option which may be useful to you.

This command will create a variable with the local IP address.

LOCAL_IP=$(osascript -e "IPv4 address of (system info)")

This command will return the local IP address stored in $LOCAL_IP

echo $LOCAL_IP

Solution 3:

The local IP address can be obtained with the following command:

ipconfig getifaddr en0

or en1, depending on your Mac and your connection.