How to Recover a Wifi Password in Mac OS X

Ran into a problem earlier today where I wanted to connect a Nintendo Wii to the wifi network, but I couldn’t remember the password that had been set. I didn’t want to resort to resetting the password on the router, so I figured there had to be a way to find the information that was stored on my computer. Did some Google’ing, but the information I found was antiquated and seemed to only work on Mac OS X versions that came before Snow Leopard, which is what I am using. In case you are in the same spot as me, here’s how I found it.

  1. Open up /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app
  2. Select the “System” option under “Keychains” in the upper left part of the window
  3. Look for the name of the wifi network you need to view and right-click on it when you find it. Select option “Get Info”.
  4. Click the checkbox next to “Show Password” and you’ll be prompted to enter an administrator’s credentials. 
  5. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be prompted to allow kcproxy to access the keychain. Click “allow” and then you’ll see the password presented.

I hope that helps someone out there!