Support
Questions, bugs, feature requests, and OUI weirdness — happy to help.
Email is the fastest path.
Choate Labs is a one-person studio. Email lands directly with the developer, usually answered within a day or two.
Email SupportFrequently asked questions
How does MAC Vendor Lookup find the vendor?
The app ships with a bundled copy of the IEEE Registration Authority's OUI registry — about 39,340 24-bit prefixes mapped to manufacturer names. When you enter or scan a MAC, the app looks up the first 6 hex characters in the local database. No network request is made.
Does the app work offline?
Yes. There is no network code in the app at all. It works on a plane, in a basement, or anywhere with no signal.
How do I update the OUI database?
The database is bundled with each app version. To get the latest entries, update MAC Vendor Lookup from the App Store. The Settings tab shows how many vendors are in the current build.
What input formats are accepted?
All of these work:
00:14:51:AB:CD:EF— colon-separated00-14-51-AB-CD-EF— dash-separated0014.51AB.CDEF— Cisco dotted001451ABCDEF— no separators001451— just the 6-character OUI
Case-insensitive. The app strips anything that isn't a hex digit and uses the first 6 characters.
What does "Randomized / private" mean on the detail screen?
The U/L bit (the second-least-significant bit of the first byte) tells you whether a MAC is universally administered (assigned by the IEEE to a manufacturer) or locally administered (set by software).
iPhones and Android devices use locally-administered MACs as a privacy feature when joining Wi-Fi networks. The vendor name on a randomized MAC is the device's interface, not the manufacturer of the hardware. The app flags these so you don't go looking for a "Private" company.
What's the EUI-64 field?
EUI-64 is how IPv6 derives an interface identifier from a MAC. It inserts FF:FE in the middle of the 6-byte MAC and flips the U/L bit, producing an 8-byte ID used in stateless autoconfiguration (RFC 4291). Useful when you're chasing IPv6 addresses back to specific hardware.
The camera scan didn't read my label.
Try these in order:
- Tap on the label inside the reticle to focus.
- Turn on the torch (top-right) if the label is dim or chrome-finished.
- Get closer — labels are usually small. The camera prefers about 4–8 inches.
- Make sure the MAC is fully visible inside the reticle.
- Use Scan Session for continuous detection if it's a single hard-to-read label.
If OCR consistently fails on a label that's clearly readable to you, email a photo and we'll improve it.
Can I share my history or back it up?
Use Bulk Lookup or Scan Session to share results as CSV via the iOS share sheet. iCloud sync of the local database is on the roadmap for a future release.
What does the app collect about me?
Nothing. See the privacy policy for the full breakdown.
It crashed / froze / something feels broken.
Email stephen.choate@choatelabs.com with what you were doing, your iOS version, and your device model. If you can include a screenshot or a screen recording, even better.
Feature requests?
Yes please. The roadmap is informal and friendly to suggestions from real users. Things on the list right now: iCloud sync, vendor logos, Live Activities, a Mac Catalyst version. Email if you want to nudge any of those up the list, or pitch something new.