How to See the Password of Wifi in Windows 10
Wi-Fi is used extensively to connect to multiple networks at different times and places. Be it a coffee shop, a free Wi-Fi hotspot, office wireless network or a home network, Wi-Fi is used everywhere. Windows 10 and Windows 11 have the capability to remember the settings of multiple Wi-Fi networks, including their network security keys.
With the passage of time, it becomes difficult to remember or even save passwords for all the Wi-Fi networks you have connected to and saved in the past. Rather than trying to hunt down passwords from sysadmins, technicians or using other ways, if you forgot the Wi-Fi password, Windows gives multiple options to see the saved Wi-Fi passwords.
View WiFi password in Windows 10/Windows 11
View active WiFi password from Wireless Properties
Windows 10/11 provides a simple way to see the password for your current Wifi connection. Just follow the steps below to see your current WiFi password:
- Go to Control Panel –> Network and Internet –> Network and Sharing Center. (Windows key + R –> ncpa.cpl)
- Click on the active Wifi connection.
- Click on Wireless Properties to open Wifi network properties.
- Go to the Security tab and select Show characters to reveal your current Wifi password.
This method only works for active connections only. That means if you are not connected to a Wi-Fi network, you will not be able to use this method to view the network security key or password. To do this, you will need to follow the steps given in the next section.
Find all Wifi passwords saved in Windows 10/11
What if you want to find all the saved Wifi passwords in your Windows computer? There are two ways of finding all the saved Wifi passwords in Windows. Let's discuss both of them.
View WiFi passwords using Command Prompt
To see all the Wifi passwords, you will need to run some commands in the command prompt.
- Open the command prompt (Windows Key + X + C)
- Run the following command to show all the Wifi profiles saved on your computer:
netsh wlan show profiles - Now run the following command to reveal the Wifi password content of each profile:
netsh wlan show profile name=WifiConnectionName key=clear
Replace WifiConnectionName with Wifi SSID which you can find from the above mentioned command.
If you only want to see the password omitting all other details, you can run the following command instead:
netsh wlan show profile name=Sanixmi key=clear | find /I "Key Content"
You can check all the WiFi passwords saved on your computer using the same command. Just replace the profile name with a different one.
See Wifi password for a specific network
If you want to find Wifi password of a specific network only, follow the instructions below:
Open Command Prompt in administrative mode
- Run the following command:
netsh wlan show profilesThis command will list all the saved Wifi profiles on the computer. Copy the network profile you want the password for.
- Run the following command:
netsh wlan show profile name="network-profile-name" key=clearReplacenetwork-profile-name with your copied network name.
This will show the Wifi password in clear text.
Get a list of saved WiFi passwords using PowerShell
The same commands listed above also work in PowerShell. But if you want to list all the passwords in a nice table in PowerShell, you can run the following command.
Open PowerShell as an administrator and run the following command:
(netsh wlan show profiles) | Select-String "\:(.+)$" | %{$name=$_.Matches.Groups[1].Value.Trim(); $_} | %{(netsh wlan show profile name="$name" key=clear)} | Select-String "Key Content\W+\:(.+)$" | %{$pass=$_.Matches.Groups[1].Value.Trim(); $_} | %{[PSCustomObject]@{ PROFILE_NAME=$name;PASSWORD=$pass }} | Format-Table -AutoSize You can also download the following PowerShell script and run it on any computer to get a list of saved Wifi passwords.
Once downloaded, right-click the file and select Run with PowerShell.
If you want to use a visual medium, you can check out a few software that can do the job for you.
View all saved Wifi passwords using WiFi Password Revealer
If you are not comfortable with using the Windows command line, you can use third party software called Magical JellyBean Wifi password revealer which will retrieve all the Wifi passwords saved in Windows.
You just have to download Wifi password revealer, install and run it. There is no configuration required.
You can select any Wifi connection and press Ctrl + Alt + C to copy the password in the clipboard.
View all saved WiFi passwords using WirelessKeyView
WirelessKeyView is a portable application from NirSoft which displays detailed information about each wireless network saved on the computer. It's a very small tool and a very handy one especially for sysadmins.
Download WirelessKeyView from here.
Unzip the zip file in the folder and run WirelessKeyView.exe. This will run the app without installation.
Please note that Windows Defender detects WirelessKeyView as malware but it is pretty safe. You will need to whitelist the executable before it can be run on your computer.
Please note that if you are using Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP, the actual Wifi password will not be shown but it will be shown in HEX form. The same HEX password can be used to activate Wifi on any other device.
Also see:
How to See the Password of Wifi in Windows 10
Source: https://www.itechtics.com/2-ways-find-saved-wifi-passwords-windows-10/