Did you forget the password to your Home or Office Wi-Fi? You probably forgot it because it was saved on your device, and you haven’t used it in a while. This situation arises very often. One solution can be opening your router’s configuration page and viewing the saved WiFi password. But chances are, you might not have access to your router’s settings. Another way would be extracting the password from your Windows computer itself.
View Wi-Fi passwords in Windows 11/10
In this post, we’ve covered a nice way to extract saved Wi-Fi passwords from your Windows 10 computers. Two methods are covered and can be used as per the situation. Remember that, both of these methods will only expose the key that was saved on your computer. You must have connected to a Wi-Fi network once to reveal its password.
If you are currently connected to the Wi-Fi network for which you want to recover the password, follow the GUI method. And if you are not currently connected, but the network credentials are saved in your device, you can follow the CMD method.
1] Via Windows Settings
This is the simplest way to view the saved password for a Wi-Fi network you are currently connected to.
1. Open Settings, then go to Network and Internet and now click open Network and Sharing Centre.
2. Now under the active networks, locate your Wi-Fi network and click on it to open a new dialog.
3. On this dialog, click on Wireless Properties to open one more dialog.
4. Go to the security tab, under the password field click on Show characters checkbox to reveal the password.
Here you have it, this is the password that your computer uses to connect to your Wi-Fi network. Now that you’ve remembered it, you can share it with anyone you want.
UPDATE: Windows 11 will now soon allow you to see saved passwords as follows:
Open Settings > Network and internet > Wi-Fi > Manage known networks > Framework > View Wi-Fi security key. Click on the View button to see the WiFi password.
2] Using CMD
If you were connected to a Wi-Fi network previously but aren’t connected right now, you can use this method. This method involves punching in some simple CMD commands to reveal the password.
1. Open a CMD Window and type in the following command
netsh wlan show profile
This will display the list of all known Wi-Fi networks. Make note of the profile name you want to view saved password for.
2. Use the following command to view the password. Replace “PROFILE_NAME” with the name you noted in the previous step (without quotes).
netsh wlan show profile “PROFILE_NAME” key=clear
This command will display a lot of details about that Wi-Fi network. You can read through these details and configuration or directly jump into Security Settings and look for a field called Key Content. This would give you the information you were looking for. Remember that, you need not be connected to that Wi-Fi network if you are using CMD to view its password.
So, this was all about viewing saved passwords on your Windows 11/10 computer. I am sure there will be a few third-party tools that would let you do the same. But since it is a very basic trick, you can follow this guide and do it yourself. This trick overall required minimum expertise and the CMD commands are simple.
If you used any other method or tool, let us know in the comments section below.
