Show wifi password in clear

Got access to a wifi network, but forgot the password? No a problem. At least not if you have a windows, Mac or Linux machine with access. All these OSes can basically without restrictions show you the wifi password in clear text.

Windows

Once you have access to the wifi network. Open the commandline and enter the following command replacing “SSID” with the actual name of the wifi network you want to retrive the password to.

netsh wlan show profile name=SSID key=clear

MacOS

Open a terminal window and write the command below replacing SSID with the actual name of the wifi network (note: SSID is case sensitive):

security find-generic-password -wa SSID

On MacOS the system will ask you to authenticate, as the SSID password is stored in you keychain (as secure vault) and authenticating entitle MacOS to unlock it.

Linux

There may be various ways to do this on Linux depending on which distribution you run. This generally works well (repalace SSID with the actual wifi network name):

nmcli device wifi show-password