hwidgen 1.0.2

Generate a unique hardware ID (HWID) for Windows, macOS, and Linux

HWIDGenerator

A Python utility that generates a unique hardware ID (HWID) for a device. It works on Windows, macOS and Linux! The HWID is a SHA-256 hash made from hardware-specific values so it's unique per machine.

How It Works

It collects some hardware info depending on your OS and hashes it all together with SHA-256. The result is always a 64-character hex string.

Windows

Uses PowerShell (Get-CimInstance) and the Python built-in winreg module to get:

Source	Method	Value
CPU	PowerShell Win32_Processor	ProcessorId
C: Drive (logical)	PowerShell Win32_LogicalDisk	VolumeSerialNumber
Machine GUID	winreg (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography)	MachineGuid

No external packages required. No admin rights needed.

macOS

Uses ioreg and diskutil to get:

• IOPlatformUUID
• IOPlatformSerialNumber
• Volume UUID

Linux

Uses /etc/machine-id and lsblk to get:

• Machine ID from /etc/machine-id
• Disk serial number
• Partition table UUID (PTUUID)

It automatically detects your primary disk so it works with both SATA (/dev/sda) and NVMe (/dev/nvme0n1) drives. No sudo needed!

Requirements

• Python 3.x
• No external packages needed on any platform — everything uses the Python standard library

Install development dependencies (testing, linting):

pip install -r requirements/requirements_dev.txt

Usage

from hwidgen import HWIDGenerator

hwid = HWIDGenerator.get_hwid()
print(hwid)  # e.g. 884618235043ffce89d87862abf8882e...

Example Output

884618235043ffce89d87862abf8882eb5294517f107f0f980bec789258e8a98

What is this useful for?

If you want to verify that a user is running your software on the same machine (like a license check), you can generate their HWID and store it in your database. Since it's already hashed you don't expose any raw hardware info.

Notes

• The HWID will change if you replace major hardware components (CPU, disk, etc.)
• On Windows, VolumeSerialNumber can change if you reformat your C: drive. MachineGuid is generated by Windows at install time — it's stable day-to-day but will change if Windows is reinstalled.
• On Linux, lsblk is used without sudo — this works on most systems but on some hardware the serial might be empty depending on the driver.