How do I find out the name of the SSID I'm connected to from the command line?

Question

Neither iwconfig nor iwlist seem to be able to do this for me.

score 174 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 27 '13 at 22:44

174

iwgetid provides the ssid

iwgetid -r gives just the name.

In a Bash script try something like myssid=$(iwgetid -r) to put it in a variable

edited Dec 27 '13 at 22:44

Wouter

713
7
17

answered Dec 27 '13 at 21:26

Peter Apps

1,741

mikewhatever · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-24T00:50:03.513

37

Run nm-tool | grep \*. That should show just the line with the SSID you are connected to.

Edit: The nm-tool utility had ceased to exist, so in 16.04 and newer releases, please use any of the methods suggested by my esteemed colleagues below.

For example: nmcli -t -f active,ssid dev wifi | egrep '^yes' | cut -d\' -f2 works well.

edited Feb 24 '18 at 00:50

answered Mar 29 '12 at 15:19

mikewhatever

33,013

score 32 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 30 '12 at 09:02

Although the question has already been answered, the iwconfig tool does display the ESSID of the currently connected Wifi network. Perhaps it does not work with connections managed through NetworkManager but it works with interfaces managed through ifup/ifdown:

iwconfig | grep wlan0

lists:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"ahoi"

score 21 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 25 '16 at 20:24

None of the prior answers worked for me unfortunately. I was however able to get the details via

$ sudo iw dev wlan0 info

and got

Interface wlan0
    ifindex 5
    wdev 0x1
    addr **:**:*:*:*:*
    ssid *****
    type AP
    wiphy 0
    channel 2 (2417 MHz), width: 20 MHz, center1: 2417 MHz

score 9 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 08 '19 at 08:55

nmcli -t -f name connection show --active

shows the same output without listing all available SSIDs in vicinity so without delay. if more network interfaces are available and active can be parsed by interface name like so:

nmcli -t -f name,device connection show --active | grep wlp3s0 | cut -d\: -f1

score 9 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 12 '16 at 16:16

9

You can also use the iw tool (from the iw package) to obtain the WiFi link parameters which includes the currently associated SSID - e.g for wlan0:

iw dev wlan0 link

answered Jul 12 '16 at 16:16

Pierz

3,391

score 3 · Answer 7 · edited Jan 24 '22 at 15:41

3

simply use this command to get only the ssid "NAME"

iw dev wlan0 info | grep ssid | awk '{print $2}'

Where wlan0 is the interface for your Wi-Fi card. Check it in ifconfig or iwconfig.

The output is only the "ssid name" of the network you connected...

edited Jan 24 '22 at 15:41

manu_romero_411

151

answered Jun 04 '20 at 06:27

Devalla Bharath

31

How do I find out the name of the SSID I'm connected to from the command line?

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