85

I want to find the password for the wireless network that I am currently connected to (and I entered the password when connecting to the network). How can I do this in Ubuntu?

Anderson Green
  • 2,371

9 Answers9

88

Left click the connections icon at the top right.

Choose edit connections and then choose edit on the connection you need and click the wireless security.

1

And click the 'show password'checkbox

2

anand mbs
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Rinzwind
  • 309,379
50

If you want to do this with the command line, the wireless network configuration files are saved in the /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ directory. You can get them all at once like this:

sudo grep -r '^psk=' /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/

This will give you output like this:

/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/MyExampleSSID:psk=12345
/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/AnotherSSID:psk=password

You can suppress the filename with the -h flag:

sudo grep -hr '^psk=' /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/

The output is easier to read at a glance:

psk=12345
psk=password
Community
  • 1
MRTgang
  • 701
30

In the command line:

nmcli dev wifi show-password
BeastOfCaerbannog
  • 16,703
Vojtech Jaros
  • 301
18

Open a terminal (press Ctrl+Alt+T), then type:

sudo cat /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/<your-SSID>

(Of course, substitute <your-SSID> with your network's name.)

Look for the line named psk. This should contain your password, after the = sign.

psk=notreallymypassword
Eliah Kagan
  • 119,640
roadmr
  • 34,802
4

This will give you the password for your current connection.

sudo grep psk= /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/*

Or

sudo grep psk= /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/(YOUR-SSID)
user.dz
  • 49,176
Stryc9
  • 41
2

here is a one liner to make @David Foerster answer more useful

MYCWD=`pwd`; cd /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ ; sudo grep -e '^psk=' * | less ; cd $MYCWD
賞賛アーチ
  • 166
1

Using nmcli on Ubuntu 18.04, replace WIFINAME with the wireless network name (ssid):

nmcli --show-secrets connection show WIFINAME | grep 802-11-wireless-security.psk:

show-password does not work for me

helpless child
  • 31
1

you can just type ls /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ and it will show the name of your network, so just press the up arrow on keyboard and type the name of your connections and change ls to sudo cat

the password will be psk

DAn Baltag
  • 111
0

Going further with MRTgang second command to remove "psk=" leaving only the password

sudo grep -hr '^psk=' /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ | sed 's|psk=||g'
bonelifer
  • 31