How to find WiFi password on Windows 11
Windows 11 has a new UI. The quick toggles and panels that users had access to on Windows 10 have been moved or redesigned so that they’re less useful than they were on Windows 10. On Windows 11 you now need to go through the Settings app to access basic settings that were much easier to access on Windows 10.
WiFi password on Windows 11
When you connect to a WiFi network on Windows 11, you have to first enter the password for the network. You only need to enter the password once. As long as the password for the network does not change, you will connect to the network automatically when it is in range. The password is stored locally.
View WiFi password on Windows 11
The WiFi password is stored on Windows 11 and users can look it up any time they need to. You have to be connected to a WiFi network to view the password for it.
- Open Control Panel.
- Go to Network and Internet.
- Select Network and sharing center.
- Click the WiFi network that you’re connected to.
- In the window that opens, click the Wireless properties button.
- In the window that opens, enable the ‘Show characters’ option and authenticate with the admin password.
View WiFi password for other networks
If you’d like to view the password for a WiFi network that you connected to before, but are not connected to at the moment, you can. Unfortunately, you can’t do this via the GUI. You’re going to have to go through the Command Prompt.
- Open Command Prompt.
- Run this command:
netsh wlan show profile - Note down the name of the WiFi network that you want to find the password for.
- Run this command:
netsh wlan show profile “WiFi network name” key=clear - Scroll down and look for the Key Content value to find the password for the network.
- Repeat for other networks.
Note: When you run the command in step 4, make sure the name is enclosed in double quotes.
Conclusion
On Windows 7, it used to be easy to view the password for the WiFi network that you’re currently connected to. It changed in Windows 10 so that this particular window is harder to bring up. The change hasn’t been undone in Windows 11. The Control Panel is still present on Windows 11 so the process for looking up the password for a WiFi network is more or less the same as it was in Windows 10. If you choose to forget a WiFi network, you won’t be able to look up its password anymore.
