How to change DNS settings from command line

In Windows, to change the DSN settings from Control Panel is quite easy, but when the settings need to be changed often then it goes back on the command line because is easy to be saved as a .bat or .cmd file and can be executed as many times as needed.

The command line tool used to change the DNS settings is netsh which allows you to configure just about any aspect of your network connections in Windows. In order to use the tool the command line needs to be started as Administrator:

• in Windows 10 or 8.1, right-click the Start menu (or press Windows+X on your keyboard) and choose "Command Prompt (Admin)."
• In previous versions of Windows, search Start for "command prompt" and then right-click the result and choose "Run as Administrator."

Additionally, to this, you might also need to change the IP address.

Step 1 - View Your Network Information

To change the DNS settings first you need to find the full name of the network for the interface you want to do the change. For this, type the following command:

netsh interface ipv4 show config

The result of the command will display all the network interfaces available on the computer.

In my case, I am looking for the "Local Area Connection". You can also see the current DNS settings of 10.10.10.10 and 20.20.20.20.

Step 2 - Change Your DNS Settings

The syntax to change the primary DNS settings is:

netsh interface ipv4 set dns name="THE INTERFACE NAME" static DNS_SERVER

to add a secondary DNS server the syntax is:

netsh interface ipv4 add dns name="THE INTERFACE NAME" DNS_SERVER index=2

Note the add instead of set and the index=2 at the end.

For my case I will change the primary DNS to Google's primary public DNS:

netsh interface ipv4 set dns name="Local Area Connection" static 8.8.8.8

and the secondary DNS to Cloudflare's public DNS:

netsh interface ipv4 add dns name="Local Area Connection" 1.1.1.1 index=2

Step 3 - Check the Configuration

To check the configuration we check again the settings by running the show config command:

netsh interface ipv4 show config

You can notice the change of the DNS settings for the "Local Area Connection" interface.

Step 4 - Add the commands in a .bat file(optional)

The .bat file will contain both commands for primary and secondary follow by the show config command to see the changes directly on the console. For the .bat file to be successfully executed needs also to be under Administrator rights.

netsh interface ipv4 set dns name="Local Area Connection" static 8.8.8.8
netsh interface ipv4 add dns name="Local Area Connection" 1.1.1.1 index=2
netsh interface ipv4 show config

References

• Netsh manual
• How to change computer's IP address from command line