HOW TO RECOVER YOUR WI-FI NETWORK PASSWORD IN WINDOWS
If you have lost or forgotten the Wi-Fi password for your home network, here’s how to find it without having to walk all the way to your Wi-Fi router. As with most things on your computer, Windows keeps a record of every Wi-Fi network accessed along with the password used to connect to it. You can recover Wi-Fi passwords on Windows computers by entering a couple netsh commands in the command prompt. In fact, you can retrieve the network name (SSID) and password for every Wi-Fi network you have ever logged onto with your computer using netsh, a network utility built-in to all Windows computers.
Open the Command Prompt
There are many ways to open the Windows Command Prompt. One way is to type “cmd” or “command prompt” in the Search box on the bottom taskbar and click “Run as administrator”.
First Command: netsh wlan show profile
Type netsh wlan show profile in the command prompt and press Enter. This will display a list of every Wi-Fi network you have connected to on your computer. Be sure to enter this command exactly as it appears or your computer will throw an error instead of executing the command.
Take note of the network name (SSID) that you want to recover the password for because you will enter the network name in the next command.
Second Command: netsh wlan show profile [SSID] key=clear
Type netsh wlan show profile SSID key=clear, replacing “SSID” with the network name you want to recover the password for.
Scroll to Security Settings
Scroll down through the results until you reach the “Security Settings” section. You will find an entry named "Key Content" and your Wi-Fi password will be displayed next to it.
Use this password to connect devices to your wireless network.
Published 5/25/2022