How to Recover a Lost WiFi Password

This is how you can recover your lost WiFi password with ease

Nowadays, friends ask for the WiFi password as a first thing whenever they visit. And if you have forgotten your “hard to guess” password, then you may feel a little troubled. Therefore in this article I’ll discuss ways to recover lost WiFi passwords.

I’ll start with PCs:

Windows PC

If you’ve connected a Windows PC to the same Wi-Fi network in the past, it should be fairly simple to find the Wi-Fi password. To begin, open the Start menu (or press the Windows button on your keyboard), then type “View network connections” and hit enter.

Next, find the connection labelled WiFi in the following menu, right click this entry and choose “Status”

On the menu that pops up next, click on the “Wireless Properties” button.

From here, you will see another window pop up, move to “Security” tab in the window, then tick the box next to “Show Characters” and your password will be visible.

Mac OS X

On Macbooks or other Apple computers connected to your WiFi network your have to open the “Finder” app, click the applications entry in the left hand pane. Now open the utilities folder in the main window.

Now launch the “KeyChain Access.app” utility.

From here, make sure the “System” is selected and “Passwords” is highlighted as the category in the left hand pane. Next, locate your router in the list and double click the entry.

In the window that pops up next to “Show Password” to display your password. You probably need to input your admin credentials to unlock it.

Smartphones

Your Android smartphone must be rooted to see the saved WiFi password. You can use a password utility such as WiFi Key Recovery on your rooted device to regain password.

On iOS smartphone, you first have to jailbreak it and then use a cydia app like Network List to view your saved WiFi password.

Router Methods to recover the password

Default Password Method

If you have a router from your internet provider, chances are it has the default network name and password printed right on the router’s label somewhere (look for SSID or ESSID, and WPA, WPA2, etc.). This only works if you haven’t changed the default login information (which you should have!), so skip below for a way to get your Wi-Fi password.

Log-on Method

For this next method to work, your computer will need to be connected directly to your router with an Ethernet cable if you’re not already connected to it via Wi-Fi. Once you’ve taken care of that, if necessary, simply enter your router’s IP address into any web browser. For all common router brands, one of the following 3 addresses should work, but note that if you’ve manually changed your router’s default IP address, you’ll have to enter that instead:

192.168.0.1 (Netgear, D-Link, Belkin, and more)
192.168.1.1 (Netgear, D-Link, Linksys, Actiontec, and more)
192.168.2.1 (Linksys and more)

Once you’ve typed in your router’s address, you’ll be prompted to enter the user name and password. The credentials are by default “admin” for both fields.

Your router may have different default username and password, check your router and its manual to find it out. Once you are logged-in, you can change the password by going into the “Security” tab.

Reset Method

You can reset your router to set its password to its default. There is a key on your router labelled “Reset” which you have to press for 10 seconds or so, in order to reset your router. But resetting is not a good idea as most of the routers are set to open when performed a reset on. Then you will need to set it up again.

Hacking Method

Since it is not illegal to hack your own router, you can give it a try. There are numerous ways to hack your router but they require a lot of patience, especially of you are using WPA2 with TKIP on your router. There is a commercial tool ElcomSoft Wireless Security Auditor or EWSA , which can do it for you. In free tools Aircrack-ng is considered one of the best. You can also use Reaver if you had WPS enabled on your router.

Post your queries in the comments below.