Find every device on your network with an Android phone
Four ways to ask the same question, and what each one can prove.
An Android phone can find the devices on a network by sweeping the addresses in a range and listing whatever answers. Pingo does that for the Wi-Fi you are joined to from the Devices tab, and for a private range you type from Scan another subnet. Each device is headlined by one shared naming chain, so the same device reads the same way in the device list, on the network map and in the subnet sweep.
Anything that answers is a fact. Silence is not: an address that stayed quiet may hold a sleeping device, a device that refuses the sweep, or nothing at all, and Pingo does not pretend to tell those apart.
Steps in Pingo
- Open the Devices tab and tap Scan again to sweep the network this phone is on.
- For a picture rather than a list, open the Tools tab, then the Discover group, then Network map.
- In Tools, Discover, open Find a device by name. It sweeps the network and matches a name, hostname, vendor or model.
- In Tools, Discover, open Scan another subnet, tap Choose a range, type the range and tap Use this range.
- Tap Scan this range. The four tiles read Range, Addresses swept, Devices and Names.
What a typed range accepts, and what it refuses
A range can be a CIDR such as 192.168.50.0/24, a single address, or a first address to a last address. Pingo sweeps private ranges only, at most 256 addresses in one run, and it refuses anything larger or anything public rather than quietly trimming it, because a trimmed range would be reported as though it had been scanned in full. The refusal names the reason, for example that a range covers more addresses than one run will sweep.
When a sweep finishes with nothing, the screen reads NOTHING ANSWERED and says that is not proof the range is empty. When a sweep is stopped part way, the Addresses swept tile hatches instead of printing a number, and rows left behind read Not identified rather than Unknown device, which would be a finding rather than an absence.
What Pingo can and cannot tell you here
What it can tell you
- List every address that answered, in the range you are on or a private range you name.
- Headline each device the same way in the device list, the network map and the subnet sweep.
- Match one device by the name, hostname, vendor or model it reports.
- Say exactly how many addresses were swept, and hatch that figure when the sweep did not finish.
What it cannot
- Prove a range is empty. Nothing answering is not the same as nothing being there.
- Work out which switch or access point a device sits behind, so the map draws no line from one device to another.
- Sweep a public range, or more than 256 addresses in one run. Both are refused, never trimmed.
- Read a hardware address, maker or model for addresses that sit past a router. What a device answers with still crosses; the rest does not.
Related tools
Network map, Find a device, Find a device by name, Wake-on-LAN and Scan another subnet are all listed on the tools page.