If you are concerned about your privacy, you must use a separate password for almost all of your accounts. Although this might make it difficult to remember all of your passwords, password managers allow you to avoid having to do so. Regretfully, we frequently neglect to update these managers with our Wi-Fi passwords.
If you haven’t made your own unique Wi-Fi password, you may always look on the back of your router if you’re at a loss. You’ll usually find it there, but don’t worry if it’s not. The credentials to EVERY Wi-Fi network you have ever joined to are stored somewhere on your computer. The one you’re on now isn’t the only one.
The Wi-Fi password is saved in your settings for as long as your Mac or Windows machine has previously connected to that network. All the passwords are preserved and available for sharing with anybody who want to connect to Wi-Fi, albeit it can take some research on your side.
How to locate Wi-Fi passwords in MacOS Keychain Access,
the MacOS password management system, contains all of the passwords you have typed and saved on a Mac. Passwords for Wi-Fi networks are included in it.
To begin, launch the Keychain Access app using the search function, then take the following actions:
1. Select System from the sidebar’s System Keychains section.
2. At the top of the window, select Passwords.
3. Double-click the Wi-Fi network for which you wish to retrieve the password.
4. Lastly, click the box next to “Show password” and, when prompted, enter your password.
The password you used to access that Wi-Fi network will then be shown in the password box. Double-clicking in the password box allows you to choose the password and, if necessary, copy it to your clipboard.
How to locate Windows Wi-Fi credentials
On Windows, it’s easy to find the password for the Wi-Fi network you’re currently connected to, but it takes some effort to retrieve all of your saved Wi-Fi passwords, so we’ll go over both approaches below.
To get the password for the Windows Wi-Fi network you are presently connected to:
1. After clicking the Start button, select Network and Sharing Center under Control Panel > Network and Internet (Windows 11) or Network and Sharing Center under Settings > Network & Internet > Status (Windows 10).
2. Click the blue-highlighted name of your Wi-Fi network next to Connections.
3. Select the Security tab after selecting Wireless Properties on the resulting Wi-Fi Status screen.
4. Lastly, to see your Wi-Fi network password above it, select the option next to Show characters.
There are other methods to discover your Wi-Fi network passwords, though. There is a technique to retrieve the passwords of every Wi-Fi network you have ever joined to on your Windows computer, but the aforementioned approach only lets you see the password for the network you are now connected to.
To locate all of your Windows Wi-Fi network passwords:
1. On your desktop, right-click the Windows symbol in the taskbar.
2. Select “Admin” from the Windows Terminal.
3. To examine all of the Wi-Fi networks you have connected to, type netsh wlan show profile into your keyboard and press Enter.
4. Type “(Wi-Fi network name)” into netsh wlan display profile after locating the Wi-Fi network you wish to access. After entering key=clear (for instance, netsh wlan display profile “Netgear667” key=clear), press Enter.
Profile, connection, security, and other settings will be shown. The Wi-Fi network password will show up next to Key Content in the Security settings. The instructions mentioned above can also be entered using the Command Prompt tool in addition to Windows Terminal to get your Wi-Fi credentials.
Check out the top password managers and the nine guidelines for generating a password if you’d want to learn more about passwords on both your computer and smartphone.