so I am trying to make it so my friends can connect to my minecraft server. So I look up my public ip address and type it in. It does not work. I proceed to port forward and try again, nothing. I look up the public ip address on a different device on my network and it is the same as the server. How could I find a device specific ip address so that my friends could join if all of the public ip addresses are the same?
Likely your router does not support NAT loopback.
Thus, you will not be able to connect to your public IP in the port forwarded from a device that is behind your own router.
And that is correct that all devices on your local network will show is having the same public IPv4 that is what a net router does.