Recover Your Wi-Fi Password from Windows CLI

Gregg

In case you misplaced your wi-fi password you can recover it very easily using 2 commands on Windoze:

Open the Terminal or PowerShell

PS C:\Users\user> netsh wlan show profile

The output will be similar to this. You need to obtain the User Profile of the connection that you’re interested in:

Profiles on interface Wi-Fi: Group policy profiles (read only) --------------------------------- <None> User profiles ------------- All User Profile : ROUTER21 All User Profile : 4YWD8-5G All User Profile : 4YWD8

OK, so we know we have 3 profiles. Run the next command with the profile you’re interested in:

PS C:\Users\user> netsh wlan show profile name="ROUTER21" key=clear

You’ll get a bunch of output, but what you’re interested in is the field named Key Content in the Security settings section which holds the wi-fi password in cleartext:

Profile ROUTER21 on interface Wi-Fi: : blah blah blah : Connectivity settings --------------------- Number of SSIDs : 1 SSID name : "ROUTER21" Network type : Infrastructure Radio type : [ Any Radio Type ] Vendor extension : Not present Security settings ----------------- Authentication : WPA2-Personal Cipher : CCMP Authentication : WPA2-Personal Cipher : GCMP Security key : Present Key Content : mywifitpassword : blah blah blah : :