Recover Forgotten Wi-Fi Password using Android Phone

How to Recover Forgotten Wi-Fi PasswordsHow to Recover Forgotten Wi-Fi Passwords

There are many tricks and shortcuts for getting your way through an Android device to perform a task. If you’ve set your Wi-Fi password a long time back and forgotten it by now you may find it difficult to operate the Wi-Fi when you try connecting a device to the network.

The Google Play Store has apps like ‘WiFi Password Recovery‘ that can be used. This app, however, helps recover lost password only for certain modems and to specifically recover default password.

Recover Forgotten Wi-Fi Password

The best way is to use a file manager app like Astro or ‘Root browser‘. Here is a tutorial for retrieving the password on rooted Android devices involving the use of an app- the ‘Root Browser-Lite’ which is free to download. It delves straight into details of the conf file of Wi-fi folder and extracts initially saved-up password.




The conf file can be read through use of any text-editor which is usually inbuilt into File Manager app and if not, can be purchased from Google Play Store. However, this method can be used for Wi-fi password retrieval only on an Android phone which has been previously connected to the Internet.

Steps to Recover Lost/ Forgotten Wi-Fi Password

  • On device open Google’s Play Store. Here, search for Root Browser Lite if your device doesn’t already have it installed yet.
  • Once this app installs returns to app drawer and launch it from here.
  • It takes only a few minutes for the app to load up. After this navigate to Data/misc/ wifi folder and search for the file wpa_supplicant.conf. Tap on it.
  • Use RB Text-Editor for opening the conf file. Alternately any other text-editor app can also be used but this is the default option that’s usually the first choice.
  • The conf file displays its contents. Here, look for the network from where you wish to retrieve the password. The Wi-Fi network is named SSID row. In here the PSK row will show the password that was set by you for the Wi-Fi connection.

Now you can crosscheck the retrieved password for Wi-Fi connection by connecting your Android device with Wi-Fi network.

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