How To Find Saved Wireless (WiFi) Passwords in Ubuntu

When you connect to a wireless network using WEP, WPA or WPA2-PSK, Ubuntu saves the password when you use “connect automatically”. You may find yourself in a situation to know the wifi password for e.g., if you need to provide the password to a visitor and you have not noted it down somewhere. Thankfully, all the network settings are stored properly and can be retrieved along with wireless password anytime you want.

To find the saved wifi passwords, follow these simple steps:

Log-in into Ubuntu with an account that has administrative privileges. Now go to the top right corner of the screen and select System Settings.

Here you will find all the system related settings. Since we are looking for the settings related to wireless networks, select Network.

In the left column, you will find three options: Wired, Wireless, Network Proxy. Go for Wireless. Here you will find all the wireless network settings you have saved by using “connect automatically”. In the pic below there is only one network setting because I haven’t connected to another network since the fresh installation of Ubuntu 12.04. You can see some other information there as well for e.g. type of authentication used and mac address. You can also delete this network setting by clicking on Forget Network. To find the saved wireless password click on Options.

In here, choose the Wireless Security tab.

Well, you can (almost) see the password here. Check the Show Password box to see the password here.

That’s it. You have your password. It was right there always, you just needed to go to the right path to get it. Similarly you can find saved wireless (wifi) passwords in Windows as well. A nice tutorial to find the saved wifi passwords in Windows.

How did you find the tutorial? Was it helpful? Do let us know in the comment section.