How to See Your Wifi Password
Whether we are using a Windows or Linux machine, the password we use to connect to any Wi-Fi network will get stored in the filesystem somewhere. And that password can be retrieved as plain text easily.
Maybe you want to connect a new device to the Wi-Fi network you are already using on another device but forgot its password. Or maybe you're a guest at someone's place and don't want to bother them by asking for the password again. Whatever the scenario is, this tutorial will show you how to find your Wi-Fi password from your Windows or Linux machine.
1. WINDOWS
First, open a command prompt window. Search for cmd in Windows start menu. When you see Command Prompt as a result, click on it.
Run the following command to see a list of all the Wi-Fi networks your Windows machine connected to previously.
netsh wlan show profiles
Profiles on interface Wi-Fi:
Group policy profiles (read only)
---------------------------------
User profiles
-------------
All User Profile : Pizza Pan
All User Profile : Pineapple
All User Profile : Internet Abyss
All User Profile : AndroidAP
We can check the password used to connect to any of these Wi-Fi networks. For example, to see the password used to connect to the Pineapple network, use the following command.
netsh wlan show profile name=Pineapple key=clear
Profile Enchanted Abyss on interface Wi-Fi:
=======================================================================
Applied: All User Profile
Profile information
-------------------
Version : 1
Type : Wireless LAN
Name : Pineapple
Control options :
Connection mode : Connect automatically
Network broadcast : Connect only if this network is broadcasting
AutoSwitch : Do not switch to other networks
MAC Randomization : Disabled
Connectivity settings
---------------------
Number of SSIDs : 1
SSID name : "Pineapple"
Network type : Infrastructure
Radio type : [ Any Radio Type ]
Vendor extension : Not present
Security settings
-----------------
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : CCMP
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : GCMP
Security key : Present
Key Content : thisIsAPassw0rd
Cost settings
-------------
Cost : Unrestricted
Congested : No
Approaching Data Limit : No
Over Data Limit : No
Roaming : No
Cost Source : Default
And that is all, we can see the password in plain text.
If there are spaces in the SSID (Wi-Fi name), like in the case of Pizza Pan and Internet Abyss, make sure to use double quotes to enclose the name as shown below.
netsh wlan show profile name="Pizza Pan" key=clear
2. LINUX
To see passwords of Wi-Fi networks used in a Linux machine, we just need to look through a file located at /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/. The file name will be the SSID (Wi-Fi name) with a .nmconnection extension, and the psk field in that file contains the password.
So, to see the password of the Pineapple network, we will use the following command.
sudo cat /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/Pineapple.nmconnection | grep "psk="
psk=thisIsAPassw0rd
To see all the Wi-Fi network connections and their passwords in one go, use the following command.
sudo grep "psk=" /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/*
