How to find the serial number on a Mac: About This Mac, System Settings, and Terminal#

If the Mac boots, you do not need to flip it over and squint at the etched serial on the underside. macOS exposes the serial number in four places, in roughly increasing order of detail returned alongside it. For the broader picture of what the serial does and how Apple's other identifiers relate to it, see the pillar guide to looking up a Mac by serial.

This guide is for a Mac that runs normally. For a Mac that won't boot, the no-boot serial-recovery paths cover macOS Recovery's Terminal, the chassis etching, and the original packaging. For a Mac you no longer have physical access to, the Apple Account device list path is the cleanest source.

1. Apple menu → About This Mac#

The most discoverable path. Click the Apple logo at the top-left of the menu bar, then choose About This Mac.

A small dialog appears with the marketing model name (for example, "MacBook Pro (14-inch, M3 Pro, 2023)"), the chip, the memory, and the serial number. The "More info…" button at the bottom opens System Settings → General → About for the more complete view.

This path is available on every current macOS release: Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia, and Tahoe (macOS 26). The visual layout has changed across macOS versions (the macOS Ventura redesign collapsed the older multi-tab About This Mac window into a simpler card), but the serial has always been on the first panel.

2. System Settings → General → About#

For more identifiers in one place, open System Settings → General → About. Scroll to the bottom block. You get:

• Chip and Memory at the top.
• Serial Number about midway down.
• Hardware UUID below it. A runtime-generated per-device identifier, distinct from the serial.
• Provisioning UDID below that on Apple silicon.
• Model Identifier. The string macOS uses internally for the hardware platform. Looks like MacBookPro18,3 (Intel-era prefix style) or Mac14,7 (M2-onward unified prefix). Useful when you need to cross-reference an Apple support article or a community catalog like AppleDB or EveryMac. The Mac Model Identifier history covers the 2022 transition from MacBookPro17,1-style prefixes to the unified Mac14,7 form.

The Model Identifier is the only one of the three identifiers above that is not etched on the chassis. It exists only in macOS. If the question someone is asking is "what board is this Mac built on?", the Model Identifier is the answer, not the serial.

3. System Information#

The legacy "System Profiler" surface, now called System Information. Two ways in:

• Option-click the Apple menu. The "About This Mac" item changes to "System Information" while Option is held. Click it.
• Or open it via Spotlight (⌘-space, type "system information").

Select Hardware in the sidebar. The right pane shows everything in About This Mac plus the SMC version, Boot ROM version, and a few other firmware-related fields.

The under-appreciated trick here lives in the menu bar: File → Speak Serial Number (⌘-4). macOS reads the serial aloud, one character at a time. This is genuinely useful when you are comparing a digitally-known serial against a worn or scratched etching. You have macOS speak the canonical value while you check it against what you can read off the chassis. Apple Support 102767 mentions Speak Serial Number specifically as the accessibility-friendly way to communicate the serial during a support call.

4. Terminal: system_profiler SPHardwareDataType#

The cleanest single command for scripting, remote support, or anywhere you need to paste the data into a ticket without retyping.

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType

Sample output, lightly trimmed:

Hardware:

    Hardware Overview:

      Model Name: MacBook Pro
      Model Identifier: Mac14,7
      Model Number: MNEH3LL/A
      Chip: Apple M2
      Total Number of Cores: 8 (4 performance and 4 efficiency)
      Memory: 8 GB
      System Firmware Version: 11881.81.2
      OS Loader Version: 11881.81.2
      Serial Number (system): C02XG...JG5J
      Hardware UUID: 12345678-ABCD-EFAB-CDEF-1234567890AB
      Provisioning UDID: 00008112-001C70541E... (Apple silicon only)
      Activation Lock Status: Enabled

What you get in one shot:

• Marketing model name.
• Model Identifier. Same string as in System Settings.
• Model Number. The order/part number (MNEH3LL/A form). On older Macs this field may be absent.
• Chip and core count.
• Memory size.
• System firmware and OS loader versions.
• Serial Number (system).
• Hardware UUID.
• Provisioning UDID (Apple silicon only).
• Activation Lock status.

For scripting, narrow the output with grep or awk:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk -F': ' '/Serial Number/ {print $2}'

That returns just the serial. Wrap it in pbcopy to put the serial directly on the clipboard:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk -F': ' '/Serial Number/ {print $2}' | pbcopy

The Activation Lock field in particular is worth knowing about. On Apple silicon Macs, Activation Lock binds the device to an Apple ID, similar to iPhone. system_profiler surfaces the status, which is the kind of thing you want to verify before paying for a used Mac. The end-to-end check for Activation Lock status on a Mac walks the buyer-side workflow when System Information isn't accessible.

The ioreg alternative#

A second Terminal command returns the same serial through a different mechanism:

ioreg -l | grep IOPlatformSerialNumber

This queries the IORegistry directly. Apple's own guidance (Support 102767) suggests this specifically for use from macOS Recovery when the Mac cannot boot fully. system_profiler is not always available in Recovery, but ioreg is. On a normally booted Mac the two return the same value; system_profiler is more readable, and ioreg is the fallback for constrained boot environments.

For fleet operations#

If you are managing dozens or thousands of Macs, you do not want to ssh into each one to run system_profiler. Two paths:

• osquery. The osquery system_info table returns the hardware serial, model, CPU, and memory across every enrolled Mac in a single SQL query. Scales linearly with your osquery deployment.
• MDM. Apple Configurator 2, Apple Business Manager, Apple School Manager, and full MDM platforms (Jamf, Kandji, Mosyle, Microsoft Intune) all surface the device serial via the standard MDM DeviceInformation query. The serial is one of the fields enrolled devices report on check-in, and it appears in the MDM console without any per-device interaction.

For ad-hoc auditing of a handful of Macs, an Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) command or a wrapped system_profiler over SSH is fine. For inventory at scale, osquery or your MDM is the right tool.

Picking the right path#

• One Mac in front of you, no Terminal habit: Apple menu → About This Mac. Fastest click path.
• One Mac, you want the Model Identifier too: System Settings → General → About.
• One Mac, the etching is ambiguous and you want to verify against a spoken value: System Information → File → Speak Serial Number (⌘-4).
• One Mac, you need to paste the serial into a ticket or script: Terminal, system_profiler SPHardwareDataType. With awk and pbcopy, it's a one-liner to the clipboard.
• Many Macs, you need a roll-up: osquery's system_info table, or your MDM's DeviceInformation query.
• A Mac that won't boot: macOS Recovery → Utilities → Terminal → ioreg -l | grep IOPlatformSerialNumber. Or the etched serial on the chassis underside (see where the serial is etched on every Mac family for the per-family locations).

What this means for the reader#

The serial number on a working Mac is one keystroke away. For most users the Apple menu path is enough. For support calls and any kind of automation, system_profiler SPHardwareDataType is the command worth committing to memory because it returns the serial plus every adjacent identifier (Model Identifier, Model Number, chip, memory, Hardware UUID, Activation Lock status) in a single readable dump. The etched serial on the underside is the fallback when the Mac is dead, not the default. If you are buying or selling a Mac, ask the seller to paste the output of system_profiler SPHardwareDataType into the listing or the conversation. That one block answers most of the questions that would otherwise take a back-and-forth to resolve. And once the serial is in hand, running it through the Macfax serial lookup confirms the exact model and year it belongs to, alongside what sellers are currently asking for that model.