Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

How do I recover a Mac wifi password?

Last month I was visiting a friend's office and was given the password to access their wireless wifi network. I want to use it again, but they've changed the access point (base station) name and now I don't have the password. I can ask, but surely there's some cool Mac way to recover the old password?

Dave's Answer:

Interesting question! There are a couple of ways to get to this data, including simply using the Keychain Access utility, but probably the easiest way to get to this specific data is to go through Airport System Preferences. Go into the Airport control area of Mac OS X and you'll find a list of all the different networks you've successfully joined in the past, including those with and without passwords.

Let me show you what I mean. Open up System Preferences --> Network --> Airport --> Configure...:

Mac OS X: Network Configuration: Airport Wireless Wifi 802.11

Pick the network you need and click on the little "EDIT" button and a new window pops up with specific information on this network:

Mac OS X: Network Configuration: Airport Wireless Wifi 802.11: Edit

Almost there. Now just click on the "Show Password" checkbox, and ....

Mac OS X: Network Configuration: Airport Wireless Wifi 802.11: Show Password

It's ugly and confusing because it's a hex ASCII password, rather than a mnemonic word or name, but it'll definitely work. If you grab that from the old configuration and copy and paste it into the new configuration when promopted for a password to access the network, you should get in just fine, assuming they didn't change the password too.

Hope that helps you out on the road to being a kewl, l33t h4x0r3r! :-)

Translation: cool, elite hacker.

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon

Categorized: Mac OS X Help (Article 6875)
Tagged: mac os x, wifi networks, wireless security
Previous: Where can I get my broken Sony PSP fixed?
Next: How do I add a theme song to a Myspace Profile?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

I used my password for Gmail on my IMAC OS X and I want to recover it, how do I do this?

Posted by: Maile Lee at March 1, 2007 6:31 PM

Very useful!! Thank you!!

Posted by: Pablo at December 24, 2008 6:21 PM

Dear santa you just saved me hours, i was trying to figure out how to change my password on my linksys, after spending what seems like hours on the phone with this group of seemingly unhelpful people i was ready to (metaphorically) kill myself. luckily i stumbled here. thankyou very much. seriously, thankyou. no, really i hate linksys thankyou.

Posted by: Michael at May 18, 2009 10:08 PM

This information is outdated. This will no longer work.

Posted by: Mystech at May 30, 2009 9:55 AM

It's changed, Mystech, but only a tiny bit. Instead of the screen looking like it does above, it's more brief, but if you've selected the Airport location and click on "Advanced..." you'll find that the rest of the steps here work just fine.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at May 30, 2009 7:55 PM

In leopartd 10.5 don't work. This is the solution:Go
Go to:
1. Applications
2. Utilities
3. Keychain Access
4. System (top left; defaults to login)
5. Found the SSID of key that I was trying to recover and double-click
6. Select the Show Password checkbox
7. Enter your admin password.

Posted by: toni at July 31, 2009 9:29 AM

Hi Dave
How do I recover the password for an application I was using on my imac, I've forgotten it.
Cheers tony

Posted by: tony at August 30, 2009 1:31 PM

can you change the password to anything you want?

Posted by: charlie at December 25, 2009 4:55 PM

Thank you so much!!! This was incredibly helpful. We were uploading to our blog from afar and needed a password.

Cheers,
Josie

Posted by: Josie at February 11, 2010 7:52 PM

thanks Toni!

Posted by: zer0 at March 3, 2010 9:22 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!