How to view the saved Wi-Fi password?

In this blog, I will demonstrate to you how to view the saved Wi-Fi password in Windows Operating System. Nowadays, people tend to forget the passwords, as the devices are smart enough to remember and manage them. Gadgets like laptops, tablets, and mobile phones store the passwords and automatically connect to the Wi-Fi, whenever it is available. We all prefer to store passwords in our devices, as it is easy, and we don’t bother to type passwords everytime we wish to connect.

As a result, we tend to forget the passwords; it’s very common to all of us. Maybe, you all agree with me on this point. Well, we can view the passwords stored by the Windows Operating system with a few clicks. Suppose you have your PC or Laptop connected to your home or office Wi-Fi. You bought a new phone, or you need to connect some other device to the Wi-Fi. But you don’t remember the Wi-Fi password. Or there may be a lot of such consequences where you need to check the password from your router. But everyone can’t access the Wi-Fi router to view the password.

Here I will show you how to view the saved Wi-Fi password from a PC with Windows 10, already connected to the Wi-Fi network. You can check the password of Wi-Fi from the PC and connect your new device with the same password.

How to view the saved Wi-Fi password

To view the password of the connected Wi-Fi network, you need to access the Network and Sharing Center (Network and Internet Setting in Windows 10) of the Windows PC. There are various options for accessing the Network and Sharing Center. You can follow this blog for accessing the Network and Sharing center in windows.

You can access it from the system tray at the right bottom side of your desktop screen. Right-click on the Network icon (the sign of a PC or Wi-Fi), and click on Open Network and Internet setting (In Windows 10). If you are using another version of Windows it may show the Network and Sharing Centre.

On clicking this link, the following screen will pop-up.

From the above screen, Click on the Change adaptor options. You will find the Network Connections wizard like one shown below.

Here you will find the all Network Adaptors of your PC. The wizard can be accessed from various other methods.

You may access it through the run command <ncpa.cpl>, or you may access also through the control panel. You can directly go to the Network Connections from the Properties of Network icon at the desktop. Else you may go through this blog for more clarification.

Once you access this Network Connections wizard, right-click on the Wi-Fi adaptor and click on the status from the short-cut menu.

You can check the status only if the Wi-Fi interface is connected to the Wi-Fi. Once you have accessed the Status of the Wi-Fi adaptor, you can check the Wireless properties.

Wi-Fi status

The following screen shows the Wi-Fi status. From this wizard you can go to view all the properties of that particular connection of the WI-Fi.

From this wizard click the Wireless Properties tab. The property tab will show you the password along with the other Wireless properties.

In the properties wizard, click on the Security Tab and check the checkbox ‘show characters’. The respective tabs and labels are highlighted in the images.

Once you check the show characters box, the Wi-Fi password will be displayed in plain text. You can use this password to connect other devices to the WI-FI.

Find password of WiFi not connected

With the above method, you can view the password of the Wi-Fi which is currently connected. If the Wi-Fi is not in range, but the password is stored in your PC; then you may view it using the command prompt.

To view the password of all Wi-Fi networks saved in the PC, use the following method.

Step 1: Open Command Prompt in Administrator Mode. Type cmd from the Run command and press Alt+Shift+Enter.
OR
Type cmd from the search bar, then find the app Command Prompt; Right-click on it and click Run as Administrator.

A dialogue box with User Account Control warning will prompt, Click Yes.

Step 2: From the command prompt in Administrator mode type the following command and hit the Enter button.

netsh wlan show profile

This command will list all the saved Wireless network SSID. The screenshot is as shown in following figure.

In the figure above there are three Wireless networks saved in the PC. I have intentionally hidden the names of other Wi-Fi networks. Now, I will show you how to check the password of the Wi-Fi network named Dot1q.

Step 3: Type the following command to view the password of the Wi-Fi network. replace the name of the Wi-Fi (Dot1q) with the correct name.

netsh wlan show profile <SSID> key=clear, here the SSID is Dot1q. The output of the command is shown in the figure below.

netsh wlan show profile Dot1q key=clear

The password of the Wireless network is shown under the label Key Content shown by the red arrow in the image above.

If your SSID has space in its name, please add quotes in the name. For example, if the name of Wi-Fi is My WiFi, then the command will be:

netsh wlan show profile "My WiFi" key=clear.

Similarly, you can find the passwords of any Wi-Fi network saved in your device using the same command.

Hope the article is helpful for finding the Wi-Fi password from your PC. Keep following Network Hope social media platforms for regular updates. Thank you for reading.