Get Bluetooth local mac address in Marshmallow

Question

Pre Marshmallow my app would obtain it's device MAC address via BluetoothAdapter.getDefaultAdapter().getAddress().

Now with Marshmallow Android is returning 02:00:00:00:00:00.

I saw some link(sorry not sure where now) that said you need to add the additional permission

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

to be able to get it. However it isn't working for me.

Is there some additional permission needed to get the mac address?

I am not sure it is pertinent here but the manifest also includes

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION"/>

So is there a way to get the local bluetooth mac address?

Solution 1

As it turns out, I ended up not getting the MAC address from Android. The bluetooth device ended up providing the Android device MAC address, which was stored and then used when needed. Yeah it seems a little funky but on the project I was on, the bluetooth device software was also being developed and this turned out to be the best way to deal with the situation.

Solution 2

zmarties is right but you can still get the mac address via reflection or Settings.Secure:

  String macAddress = android.provider.Settings.Secure.getString(context.getContentResolver(), "bluetooth_address");

Solution 3

Access to the mac address has been deliberately removed:

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.

(from Android 6.0 Changes)

Solution 4

First the following permissions have to be added to Manifest;

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH_ADMIN" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.LOCAL_MAC_ADDRESS" />

Then,

public static final String SECURE_SETTINGS_BLUETOOTH_ADDRESS = "bluetooth_address";

String macAddress = Settings.Secure.getString(getContentResolver(), SECURE_SETTINGS_BLUETOOTH_ADDRESS);

After that the application has to be signed with OEM / System key. Tested and verified on Android 8.1.0.

Solution 5

You can access Mac address from the file "/sys/class/net/" + networkInterfaceName+ "/address" ,where networkInterfaceName can be wlan0 or eth1.But Its permission may be read-protected,so it may not work in some devices. I am also attaching the code part which i got from SO.

public static String getWifiMacAddress() {
        try {
            String interfaceName = "wlan0";
            List<NetworkInterface> interfaces = Collections
                    .list(NetworkInterface.getNetworkInterfaces());
            for (NetworkInterface intf : interfaces) {
                if (!intf.getName().equalsIgnoreCase(interfaceName)) {
                    continue;
                }

                byte[] mac = intf.getHardwareAddress();
                if (mac == null) {
                    return "";
                }

                StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder();
                for (byte aMac : mac) {
                    buf.append(String.format("%02X:", aMac));
                }
                if (buf.length() > 0) {
                    buf.deleteCharAt(buf.length() - 1);
                }
                return buf.toString();
            }
        } catch (Exception exp) {

            exp.printStackTrace();
        } 
        return "";
    }

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