How to see passwords saved on Android

By reading this article you will learn how to find Android WiFi passwords with and without root. Did you know that your Android, by default, stores all passwords of the WiFi networks to which do you connect? Yes, all Android devices store passwords WiFI in a decrypted file stored in the device memory, so that the system can access it whenever it needs it.

Ma what if we, normal users, want to access this file? Since this is a document stored in the root folder of the file system, you might think that only users with root permissions on their devices can see it… but that’s not always the case.

It is very common know the password of a WiFi network to which we have previously connected with the mobile phone. The reasons may be different, such as connecting from another device that we have just acquired or sharing the connection with a guest.

Next, we will explain the different methods for see all the passwords of the WiFi networks you connected to with your Android phone, regardless of whether you have root permissions or not.

Ways to see WiFi passwords on an Android mobile

• How to see WiFi passwords on Android without root
• Find the WiFi passwords with root permissions
• View WiFi passwords without root in previous versions
• Extra: how to backup WiFi passwords

How to view and share WiFi passwords on Android without root

The tenth version of Google’s operating system introduced an even easier way to view and share stored WiFi passwords.

From first beta version of Android 10, there is the possibility to access a new menu within the information of the WiFi network to which we are connected, from which to see a QR code which, scanned by another phone, must also be updated to Android 10, you will get the credentials to be able to connect.

Regardless of what cell phone model you have, if it is updated to Android 10 or later, you will be in able to see and share the passwords of WiFi networks with other people. To do this, you just need to follow these steps:

• Go to the System Settings application, then to the WiFi and Networks section
• Access the WiFi section and tap the Saved Networks section
• Select the network whose password you want to view
• Tap the Share button, indicated by a QR code icon
• Enter the screen unlock method you configured, you will access a screen where you can see a QR code that other people with phones updated to Android 10 can scan to connect. Just below, you can see the password for the Wi-Fi network in the text.

How to see WiFi passwords saved on Android phones with older versions (with root)

This is probably the easiest method for you to be able to see the WiFi passwords saved in your Android phone in case it has not yet been updated to the latest system version, besides being root, of course we have to download a free app from Google Play.

Although in our case we chose the “Wifi Password Recovery” app, there are more such tools in the Google Store. It works exactly the same, so this procedure will work no matter which app you decide to download.

Once the application is installed, when we open it, it will ask us to grant the necessary root permissions … And that’s it. Automatically, they will appear on the screen all WiFi networks to which the terminal connected over time, with the corresponding decrypted passwords. Easy right?

How to find WiFi passwords on Android without root

If your device isn’t rooted or you don’t have Android 10, things get a little more complex as you can only perform this procedure in Android versions earlier than 6.0 Marshmallow.

This is because, starting with this version, Android encrypts the partition / data by default. And guess where is the file with the passwords ? Exactly, in this same partition.

Before starting, the first thing to do is make sure you have a handy computer – be it Windows, Mac or Linux -, a USB cable and installed ADB drivers on the computer you intend to use.

Regardless of whether or not you plan to see passwords for Wi-Fi networks by following this procedure, theinstalling the ADB drivers it is highly recommended, as it will serve for perform other advanced processes in Android such as installing ROMs or modifying essential parts of the system

Once installed, if you are on a Windows computer, open a command window CMD with Shift + click right on the folder where you installed ADB, or simply by running the ADB command in a terminal window if you are using MacOS.

The next step will be to connect the Android device to the computer via USB, making sure you have enabled USB debugging first in the developer options – if you can’t find them in the settings panel, go to the “Device information” section and press the build number several times.

With the phone connected and the command window open, it’s time to check if the computer correctly detects the device, for this you will need to run the command:

adb devices

If everything is correct, the serial number of the device will be displayed. Finally, you will need to access the file where the Wi-Fi passwords are stored. However, in this case, instead of opening it, we will create a copy which we will save directly to the hard drive of the computer. To do this, you will need to run the command:

adb pull /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf c:/wpa_supplicant.conf

In this command, the part “c: /wpa_supplicant.conf” belongs to the path where the file will be stored, then it can be modified to suit each, simply by specifying the path to the folder on your computer where you want to store the file.

In this way we will have copied the same file that we would have accessed with the application we talked about in the “with root” method, and the list with all the Wi-Fi networks will appear again, accompanied by the stored passwords.

How to create a backup of WiFi passwords

If you don’t want to have to look up the passwords for every Wi-Fi network every time you switch phones, there is a much simpler option that allows you to memorize all your passwords without having to go through any of the above.

It consists of the creating a backup copy of the Wi-Fi passwords saved on your Android phone. To do this, you need to follow these steps:

• On your mobile, go to settings and look for the System section.
• Access the Backup option.
• If you click on the “Device settings” section, you will see that one of the data from which an automatic backup is created is the passwords for Wi-Fi networks.
• Make sure you have Google Drive backup enabled.

In this way, every time you log in with your Google account on a new mobile and restore the backup stored in Google Drive, all passwords will be available again, since they will be stored in the corresponding file of the operating system and the device itself will automatically connect to those networks whose passwords are stored.