hwid

Extract the hwid on Windows, Linux, Mac. Cross-platform using Python, native OS detection.

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Installation
• Usage
• Motivation
• Features
• Warning
• Author
• Disclaimer
• License

Installation

pip install hwid

Install with Homebrew (macOS/Linux):

brew install hasansezertasan/tap/hwid

Install with Scoop (Windows):

scoop bucket add hasansezertasan https://github.com/hasansezertasan/scoop-bucket
scoop install hasansezertasan/hwid

Verify the installation

The package root is importable after installation:

>>> from hwid import __doc__
>>> isinstance(__doc__, str)
True

Usage

As a Module

import hwid

print(hwid.get_hwid())

As a CLI Tool

The bare command prints the machine's hardware ID:

uvx hwid

Or, once installed, invoke the console script:

hwid            # prints the hardware ID
hwid version    # prints the package version
hwid info       # prints version, Python, and platform information

Motivation

TL;DR I don't want to copy and paste it again...

I have created a bunch of desktop applications for Windows. I needed a way to license my applications for my users to use it without distributing to other people. I decided to use the hwid of the computer to license my applications. I needed a way to get the hwid of the computer, so I created this module. It has only one purpose: getting the hwid of the computer. It is cross-platform and does not require any external dependencies.

Features

Library:

• Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, macOS) with native OS detection
• No external runtime dependencies
• Usable as a module or a CLI

Engineering:

• Type Safety: Full type hints checked by mypy, basedpyright, ty, pyrefly, and zuban
• Code Quality: Comprehensive linting and formatting with ruff, plus architecture-contract enforcement with import-linter
• Testing: pytest with coverage reporting and parallel execution
• Documentation: Sphinx documentation with the Shibuya theme, GitHub Pages deployment, and live per-PR documentation previews
• CI/CD: Automated testing, building, and publishing across multiple platforms
• Security: CodeQL, OpenSSF Scorecard, dependency review, secret scanning (gitleaks), dependency auditing (pip-audit), GitHub Actions static analysis (zizmor — a blocking prek/CI gate plus a Security-tab dashboard, over hardened least-privilege workflows), and a CycloneDX SBOM attached to every release
• Managed .gitignore: kept in sync with the upstream github/gitignore templates by cobo, with a weekly drift check
• Modern Python: uv for dependency management, hatch for building

Warning

I do not recommend using this module for licensing purposes all alone. You can use it as a part of your licensing system.

If you are using server-client architecture, you can send the encrypted hwid to the server and check if it is valid. But keep in mind, It's easy to intercept the http requests with mitmproxy or other tools.

If you are using a local licensing system, you can encrypt the hwid and store it in a file. Then you can check if the encrypted hwid is valid. You can use pyarmor to obfuscate your code. It will make it harder to reverse engineer your code. Here is a NeuralNine Tutorial using Oxyry

Development

Clone the repository and cd into the project directory:

git clone https://github.com/hasansezertasan/hwid
cd hwid

The commands below can also be executed using the xc task runner, which combines the usage instructions with the actual commands. Simply run xc, it will popup an interactive menu with all available tasks.

checks

Run all checks to ensure code quality:

uvx "validate-pyproject[all]" pyproject.toml
uvx typos
uvx vulture src
uvx ruff check
uvx taplo lint pyproject.toml
uvx ruff format
uvx taplo format pyproject.toml
uvx mypy src

docs:serve

Serve the documentation locally:

uv run --locked tox run -e docs-server

docs:build

Build the documentation locally:

uv run --locked tox run -e docs-build

Releasing

Versioning and releases are automated with release-please, driven by Conventional Commit PR titles squash-merged into main. release-please maintains a release PR that bumps the version and CHANGELOG.md; merging it tags the release and publishes to PyPI. See the Contributing Guidelines for the commit conventions, and the Repository setup guide for one-time configuration and optional post-launch integrations such as a social preview, downstream packaging, and Repology.

Author

• hasansezertasan

Disclaimer

This module is not intended to be used for malicious purposes. The author is not responsible for any damage caused by this module. Use at your own risk.

License

hwid is distributed under the terms of the MIT license.