Today Wi-Fi is used extensively to connect to multiple networks at different times and locations, whether it is a coffee shop, a free Wi-Fi hotspot, office wireless 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 that the computer has ever connected to, 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 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 you the options to view the saved Wi-Fi passwords.
View active WiFi password from Wireless Properties
In Windows 10/11 there is a simple way to see the password of your current Wifi connection. Follow these steps 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.
Check Wifi Password from Wireless Properties
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.
netsh wlan show profiles
netsh wlan show profile show password key
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 profiles This 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=clear Replace network-profile-name with your copied network name.
This will show the Wifi password in clear text.
You can also watch this video tutorial on how to see all saved wifi on windows 10 - just click on the bellow link.
https://youtu.be/f9sj5pEgPHs