When a friend visits your home and asks for your Wi-Fi password, finding the sticky note attached to the bottom of your router can be a hassle. If your Windows 11 laptop is already connected to the network, the operating system has the password stored securely in its system files.
While you can dig through the graphical Windows Settings app to find the password for your currently active connection, the Settings app will not show you the passwords for networks you connected to in the past (like a coffee shop or a relative’s house). To retrieve any saved Wi-Fi password stored on your machine, you must use the Command Prompt.
How to List All Saved Wi-Fi Networks
Before you can ask Windows for a password, you need to know the exact name of the network profile (the SSID) as it is saved on your computer.
- Click the Start button on your taskbar.
- Type
cmdinto the search bar. - Right-click on the Command Prompt app result and select Run as administrator. (Administrative privileges are required to view security keys).
- If prompted by User Account Control, click Yes.
Once the black Command Prompt window opens, type the following command exactly as written and press Enter:
netsh wlan show profile
This command queries the Windows networking shell and outputs a list of every single Wi-Fi network your computer has ever connected to, grouped by interface. Look through the list under “User profiles” and locate the exact name of the network whose password you wish to retrieve.
How to Reveal the Password
Once you have identified the target network name, you will use a modified version of the previous command to extract its specific security details.
Type the following command, replacing NetworkName with the exact profile name you found in the previous step. If the network name contains spaces, you must enclose it in quotation marks.
netsh wlan show profile name="NetworkName" key=clear
For example, if your home network is named Netgear 5G, the command would be: netsh wlan show profile name="Netgear 5G" key=clear.
Press Enter to execute the command.
Understanding the Output
The terminal will instantly print a long list of technical information divided into sections, such as Profile information, Connectivity settings, and Security settings.
Scroll down to the section titled Security settings. Look for a line labelled Key Content. The text immediately to the right of “Key Content” is the plain-text password for that specific Wi-Fi network.
If the “Key Content” line is completely missing, it generally means the network is open (requires no password) or is using a corporate security standard (like WPA2-Enterprise) that relies on individual user credentials rather than a single shared password.