Netplan not spoofing MAC as expected

All right, I had the same problem but I finally got fixed by adding a match keyword in my script, my MAC address was 4c:ed:fe:32:de:22 and I had to specify it before changing it or forcing it. (I also added a renderer which is networkd)

network:
    renderer: networkd
    ethernets:
        eno1:
            addresses: []
            dhcp4: true
            optional: true
        enp1s0:
            match:
                 macaddress: 4c:ed:fe:32:de:22
            macaddress: de:de:de:de:de:de
            dhcp4: no
            dhcp6: no
            addresses: [172.30.0.58/24, ]
            gateway4: 172.30.0.254
            nameservers:
                addresses: [208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220]
    version: 2

I sincerely hope this helps you buddy :)

I had the same problem that Netplan didn't override the MAC address on Ubuntu Server 18.04, although I used a match clause as described in the netplan reference before setting the new MAC address.

The workaround was to create a separate systemd link configuration under /etc/systemd/network/10-override-mac.link to override the MAC address of the NIC and configure the rest via netplan.

[Match]
MacAddress=52:54:00:6b:3c:58

[Link]
MACAddress=52:54:00:6b:3c:59

I believe it only changes the MAC address that gets reported to the external connection. Running ifconfig locally will always give you the interface's real MAC address.