If you’ve ever run into weird internet issues or needed a quick fix for a network problem, you might have had someone suggest that you disable IPv6. In some scenarios, turning off IPv6 can actually help, and this article will walk you through how to disable IPv6 on various devices and operating systems, plus help you decide if it’s something you need to do.
Why Do People Disable IPv6?
IPv6 is generally a good thing, and eventually we’ll all be using it as the standard, but sometimes it can cause the occasional problem. The most common reason for disabling it is to figure out if it’s what’s causing a problem.
Not all older hardware or software plays nice with IPv6, and some legacy systems or IoT gadgets might get confused if your network uses IPv6 so by disabling it, you force everything to use the older IPv4, which those devices expect which can instantly resolve compatibility problems in mixed network environments.
Plus, believe it or not, IPv6 can cause privacy leaks if a VPN isn’t configured to handle it, so you can disable IPv6 on your device to ensure all traffic goes through the VPN’s IPv4 tunnel.
Occasionally, people report that turning off IPv6 improved their network speed or latency, which might happen in networks where IPv6 support is incomplete or routers struggle with it and there are rare cases where a network might not have proper security for IPv6
For most users, if everything is working fine, there’s no need to turn it off but if you suspect it’s causing an issue, or have one of the reasons above, it’s okay to disable IPv6 temporarily.
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How to Disable IPv6 on Windows
Windows has supported IPv6 for a long time and it’s enabled by default on Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft generally advises against turning it off permanently because some Windows features might rely on it, but they do provide ways to shut IPv6 off if needed.
Click the Start menu and type “Network Status” or “Network & Internet Settings”, then hit Enter.
In the settings window, look for a link that says “Change adapter options” and click it.
Right-click on the network connection you’re using and select “Properties” from the context menu. In the Properties window, find Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) in that list and uncheck it then click OK to apply the changes.
How to Disable IPv6 on macOS (Mac OS X)
Apple provides the option to turn off IPv6 for each network interface either through the graphical settings or via a Terminal command.
Click the Apple menu on the top left of your screen and choose System Settings and in the left sidebar, click Network.
Click on the active connection then find the Details or Advanced button. In the advanced settings, go to the TCP/IP tab where IP configuration settings are shown. Here you’ll see a setting for Configure IPv6, change this to “Link-local only” or “Off” if available.
Click OK to close the advanced settings, then click Apply in the main Network settings window to save the changes.
How to Disable IPv6 on Linux
On your Linux system, open a terminal window – keep in mind that you’ll need root privileges for the following steps.
Use a text editor to edit the sysctl configuration file. For example:
sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf
In the editor, add the following lines to the file:
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
Save the file and exit the editor, then run the following command to apply the sysctl changes immediately:
sudo sysctl -p
Finally, run ifconfig or ip addr to see if your interfaces have IPv6 addresses. If the disable worked, you’ll no longer see any addresses starting with “2001:” or “fe80:” on your interfaces.
How to Disable IPv6 on Mobile Devices
On smartphones and tablets, turning off IPv6 is more limited. For Android devices, you can turn off IPv6 for mobile data by editing your APN settings. Go to your mobile network’s APN settings and set the APN protocol to IPv4 only, which forces your Android phone to use IPv4 on cellular data.
Apple does not provide any user-facing setting to disable IPv6, and the only workarounds are indirect like using a VPN that blocks IPv6 or configuring your Wi-Fi router to disable IPv6 will ensure the iPhone only uses IPv4 on that network.
How to Disable IPv6 on Network Routers
Most home and office routers nowadays support IPv6 and usually have it enabled by default but if you want all devices on your network to stop using IPv6, it can be easier to turn it off at the router level.
Open a web browser on a device connected to your router and enter the router’s IP address in the address bar. Enter the administrator username and password for your router, then look through the router’s menus for IPv6 settings.
Once you locate the IPv6 configuration, choose the option to disable it and save or apply the new settings.
To ensure it worked, check one of your devices and visit a site like whatismyip.com which shows your IP addresses.
Drawbacks of Disabling IPv6
IPv6 is the way forward for the internet and by disabling it, you might eventually encounter services that are IPv6-only. Right now, almost everything is still reachable via IPv4, but as IPv6 adoption grows, there could be niche cases where an IPv6-only service exists.
Plus, some modern applications or services prefer IPv6 when available so if you turn it off there’s a slight chance something stops working or becomes slower because it was optimized for IPv6.
IPv6 itself isn’t inherently more secure than IPv4, but IPv6 was designed with certain features, like mandatory support for IPsec so if a network was relying on some IPv6-specific security measure, disabling IPv6 could remove that protection.
Finally, some Windows services and network discovery protocols rely on IPv6 and Microsoft has noted that disabling IPv6 might cause some components to not function.
A Note on Using IPv6 Proxies as an Alternative
Disabling IPv6 doesn’t mean you can’t still access IPv6 resources in another way. If you have IPv6 turned off on your local network but you need to reach a site or service that is only available via IPv6, you can use an IPv6 proxy service to connect to a proxy server using IPv4, and that proxy can communicate over IPv6 on your behalf.
