How long does a full home-subnet sweep take?

Under a minute on any machine from the last decade. The status bar counts down threads; a /24 range with default settings typically clears in fifteen to thirty seconds.

Can I scan from a laptop over WiFi?

Yes, and that is how most people do it. Wired is marginally cleaner for ARP readings, but WiFi changes nothing for ping sweeps and hostname lookups.

Why do some rows show '?' in the hostname column?

The reverse lookup for that address came back empty. Printers, IoT gadgets and guest phones frequently have no DNS name; the MAC column and vendor prefix are your identification there.

Watch entry 03 · tool log

Angry IP Scanner: the one you keep on a USB stick

No installer, no account, no ceremony. This entry is the cold-start loop: launch, sweep, read the table, export — the whole thing short enough to do before your coffee cools.

Angry IP Scanner main window — First contact: the main window waiting for a range.

Step 1 — pick the range

Open the preferences and the program fills in your local subnet by itself. That guess is right for most home networks. If your router splits the address space, type the range by hand — the tool remembers the last one used.

Step 2 — start and wait out the countdown

The status bar counts threads as they finish. A /24 sweeps in well under a minute on anything resembling a modern machine. Rows fill in live: alive hosts first, dead addresses marked as the sweep passes them.

Step 3 — read the table like a watchman

Answered rows with no hostname: usually printers, IoT, guest phones. The MAC vendor column identifies most of them.
An address alive that you cannot account for at all: the reason you ran the sweep. Note it, then check the router's client list before doing anything else.
Dead rows that used to be alive: devices asleep or retired — compare with last month's export.

Status colours in Angry IP Scanner — The colour legend under Help answers every 'what does red mean' question.

Step 4 — export and file it

Scan → Export all writes CSV, TXT or XML. A dated CSV per month is the raw material for the roster. The export takes the visible table, so set your columns before saving, not after.

Portable mode. The bundled builds carry their own runtime on Windows and macOS. Copy the folder to a USB stick and it runs from there on any machine, no admin rights, nothing installed. That alone explains its permanent spot in the kit.

Fetchers worth turning on

Hostname and ports fetchers ship enabled. Add the MAC-address fetcher if it is not already active — vendor names in the table turn anonymous rows into recognisable hardware. Each enabled fetcher costs a little sweep time; on home subnets the cost is invisible.

Antivirus flag? Recon-looking traffic triggers signature engines. Take the build from angryip.org or the project's GitHub releases and verify the published checksum rather than hunting for a quieter mirror.

Download Angry IP Scanner free · open source · Windows, macOS, Linux

Project home: angryip.org.