How to find your Wi-Fi password on Windows and Mac

A lifeline if you’ve forgotten or lost it

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Lost your Wi-Fi password? We’ve all been there. While service providers often ship routers with stickers or slips containing the default passwords, these can go missing for a myriad of reasons, such as people within your home ‘borrowing’ them, or your beloved pet deciding that they make an appetizing snack.

Still, your first port of call is to make sure that you do check yourrouter. While some providers provide a slip, others will have the password printed onto the router itself on a sticker, which can usually be found on the rear or underside of the device.

Similarly, some companies have a detachable plastic cover or slab with key information on the router, which will often contain the default password. This should be easy to locate and remove, so don’t pull too hard on your router or you might risk breaking it.

This is obviously limited to those who haven’t yet changed their default Wi-Fi password, but don’t lose hope if you altered it to something more memorable. If you’ve ever connected to your home Wi-Fi using a laptop or computer, then there’s still a way we can help you get back online.

How to find Wi-Fi passwords on Windows

It doesn’t matter if you’re usingWindows 10orWindows 11, this method will work for both, albeit with some differences in application names.

After this has been actioned, a large list of information will appear on your display. Scroll down until you see the Security settings, and the missing password can be found next to ‘Key Content’.

How to find Wi-Fi passwords with MacOS

Finding a lost password usingMacOSis a little easier, which is great news for those of you that own aMacBook ProoriMaccomputer. Every password that you’ve ever saved onto your system can be found within the Keychain Access application which is the dedicated password manager for Mac systems.

Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

After you have completed these steps, the missing password will then be displayed on your screen.

Other ways to find Wi-Fi passwords

While this may seem like an obvious place to check, it’s always worth checking your saved images. With so many of us now owning a smartphone, you may find that you’ve snapped a photograph of the password sticker when you originally needed it to set up your devices.

Have a hunt through your phone, any image files saved on your everyday laptop or computer (or wherever you have physically saved images from your phone to), and online cloud storage such asiCloudorDropbox.

Jess is a former TechRadar Computing writer, where she covered all aspects of Mac and PC hardware, including PC gaming and peripherals. She has been interviewed as an industry expert for the BBC, and while her educational background was in prosthetics and model-making, her true love is in tech and she has built numerous desktop computers over the last 10 years for gaming and content creation. Jess is now a journalist at The Verge.

A new form of macOS malware is being used by devious North Korean hackers

Scammers are using fake copyright infringement claims to hack businesses

Belkin’s Travel Bag for Vision Pro has pockets and is way cheaper than Apple’s own case