Just as the new versions, if you just grep for “Serial Number” you’ll be presented with serial numbers to other hardware included in the Mac, which is why the “r (system)” qualifier is included. The command results will look something like this:Īgain, the alphanumeric string after “Serial Number (system)” is the serial number. Querying Mac Serial Number by Command Line in Older Mac OS X Releasesįor querying the systems serial number in even older versions of Mac OS X, including Snow Leopard, Mt Lion, Lion, and before, use the following system_profiler and grep string:

The serial number will always appear as an alphanumeric string alongside “Serial Number (system)”, if you simply grep for “serial” you’ll find a huge number of returns that are unrelated to the systems actual serial number, thus we don’t do that. $ system_profiler |grep 'Serial Number (system)' The results for this string will look something like the following: System_profiler |grep 'Serial Number (system)' On prior versions of Mac OS X like El Capitan, Yosemite, and Mavericks, the following string will retrieve the Macs serial number: 'IOPlatformSerialNumber' = 'C241BABDLLRP8' How to Get Serial Number by Command Line in Prior Mac OS X The resulting output with serial number will look like the following: On modern versions of MacOS like Mojave, High Sierra, and Sierra, or newer, the following command syntax will retrieve the serial number from the Mac: How to Get Mac Serial Number by Command Line in Modern MacOS Be sure the command is on a single line, as usual with command line syntax. To try this yourself and get the serial number on any Mac OS machine, enter the appropriate command string below at the Terminal, depending on the version of Mac OS X in use on the Mac. How to Get the Serial Number of a Mac from Command Line in Mac OS X

Mac serial number model check