Sometimes we don’t remember Wi-Fi passwords. It is normal. Bearing in mind that, once we have entered the password for the first time, the device automatically connects on successive occasions, it is most likely that we will forget it. In today’s post we will see how we can quickly access it in Windows 10/11 and other versions of Windows by using MS-DOS commands in CMD.
What is a WLAN profile?
Some users use complex passwords made up of random characters, symbols and numbers. Others simply keep the password that comes by default when we set up the router for the first time. In either of these 2 cases, the passwords are usually quite difficult to memorize.
This could become a drama if we lose the piece of paper where we have the password written down, we forget it, or we simply do not want to change the existing Wi-Fi password. For these situations there is what is called the WLAN profilea collection of data that will help us get out of the quagmire in the most practical way.
A WLAN profile is generated whenever a user enters WiFi credentials and a wireless connection is successfully established. The profile of that Wi-Fi network includes essential data such as network name, settings and passwords.
What we are going to do next is access that data through command lines. This method works whether we are connected to said Wi-Fi network or not. It is enough that there has been a successful connection at least once for the access data to be recorded.
How to find the password of a Wi-Fi network through MS-DOS commands (CMD)
To remove the password of a Wi-Fi that we have forgotten using commands on a Windows computer, the first thing we have to do is open a command prompt window.
- Press the Windows key + R, type “cmd” and press enter. We can also write this same command in the taskbar search engine.
- We write the following command (without quotes): “netsh wlan show profile”
- Now we will type the following command, replacing WIFI with the name of the Wi-Fi network that interests us: “netsh wlan show profile WIFI key=clear”
- If we have entered the command correctly, the system will show us all the data associated with the WLAN profile of that WiFi connection, including the password. We will find this in the section “Security settings”.
As you can see, it is a very simple method to remember forgotten or old passwords, as well as an excellent source of information about the type of wireless network we are using.
How to get a stored wifi password on Android
This trick that we have just discussed works very well if we want to see the passwords that we have on the laptop or on the PC, but what if we want to see the password of a Wi-Fi network on the mobile?
In the case of smartphones in general, and Android in particular, the process of obtaining passwords is much more complicated. Instead of using a simple command we will have to locate the file wpa_supplicant.confwhich is the one that saves the names of all the passwords and Wi-Fi networks to which we have successfully connected.
This file is located inside the internal memory of the device, in the path «/data/misc/wifi/»and to access it we will have to apply one of these 3 methods:
- use a file explorer for android with root permissions to access the wpa_supplicant.conf file and be able to open it to see its content.
- Install a password recovery app like Wi-Fi Password Recovery (requires root).
- Extract password using ADB commands.
To get the key using ADB commands you will first have to install the ADB drivers for Windows, as well as the smartphone drivers. After that, enable USB debugging on the phone and connect it to the PC, open a terminal window and run the command “adb pull /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf” (without quotation marks). This will allow you to extract the file to your PC. You can see more details about how to get the password using ADB commands at THIS OTHER TUTORIAL.
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