Sharing is caring. This applies to our home Wi-Fi networks as well. Whenever a friend or family member comes to your home, they look for a stable internet connection. Connecting to a Wi-Fi network is always better than depending on mobile / cellular internet. In such situations, you have to open up your network and share your Wi-Fi password. But many users don’t remember them or know how to share Wi-Fi password.
In this guide, we will see how to share Wi-Fi passwords on different devices such as iPhones, Android Phones, Windows, or Mac. We already made dedicated guides on how to find the password on iPhone as well as Android Phones. Check them out to see the Wi-Fi password on those devices.
How to Share Wi-Fi Password?
There will be some situations where you need to open your home Wi-Fi network to guests. If you set a “Guest Network” on your Wi-Fi Router, then it is a safe and secure way to share your internet connection.
We recommend you create a guest network and ask your friends, family, or guests to connect to that network.
In case you did not create any guest network, then the only way to give access is to share your Wi-Fi password. If you remember the password, then well and good.
But if you don’t remember it, then there are simple tricks to sharing the Wi-Fi password. We will see how to share Wi-Fi Password on Windows, Android Phones, iPhones, and Mac machines.
Windows
Let us start with the most popular operating system, Windows. Despite its popularity, Windows makes certain things not so straightforward. In this case, there is no simple or easy way to share the Wi-Fi password from a Windows machine.
The only way to share a Wi-Fi password from a Windows system is to look for the password (if you don’t remember). There are a couple of ways you can do this.
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Using Control Panel
We will start with an easy way. Press the ‘Windows’ key or click on the ‘Start’ button. On the top search bar, look for ‘Control Panel’. From the results, open the Control Panel app.
If the view of the Control Panel is ‘Category’, then click on ‘View network status and tasks’ just below the ‘Network and Internet’ section. But if you have an icon view (large or small), then click on ‘Network and Sharing Center’.
Once you enter the Network settings on your Windows system, you can see your active network in the center.
Adjacent to ‘Connections’, you can see Wi-Fi followed by the SSID of the Wi-Fi Network. In my case, it is Wi-Fi (Test-Network). Click on this option.
This will bring up the Wi-Fi status of that network. Just below the ‘Signal Quality’, you can see the ‘Details’ and ‘Wireless Properties’ buttons. Click on the latter (Wireless Properties).
Now, this action will open another window with the wireless network properties of that particular network.
At the top, select the ‘Security’ tab. Here you can see all the security aspects of the Wi-Fi network. The ‘Network security key’ section consists of the Wi-Fi password. To view the password, select the ‘Show characters’ check box.
You can use this method to view the password and you can share it with your guests.
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Using Command Prompt
The previous method was a relatively easy way to retrieve the Wi-Fi Password on a Windows machine. But if you are comfortable with command prompt and Windows commands, then the next method is just for you.
You have to start by pressing the ‘Windows’ key or clicking on the ‘Start’ button. Search for ‘Command Prompt’ and click on the app to open it.
Type “netsh wlan show profiles” in the command prompt without the quotation marks and hit enter. You will get a list of all the Wi-Fi networks that the system is / was connected to.
Now, to retrieve the password, you have to type the following command.
netsh wlan show profile name= “SSID” key=clear
In the place of SSID, enter the name of your Wi-Fi network. For example, if your SSID is Test-Network, then the command becomes netsh wlan show profile name= “Test-Network” key=clear.
When you type this command and hit the enter key, you will get different sets of information such as Profile, Connectivity Settings, Security Settings, etc.
In the Security Settings section, the last entry with the name ‘Key Content’ reveals the password.
Android
Things won’t be this difficult moving further. Next, we will see how to share Wi-Fi password on an Android Smartphone. I have a Samsung phone. So, the procedure I mentioned here is specific to that brand and software.
But you can very similar procedure to other brands of Android Smartphones as well.
Open the ‘Settings’ and look for ‘Connections’.
Then, select the Wi-Fi Connection Settings.
You can see the connected network on the top and also other available networks at the bottom. There is a cog wheel next to the Wi-Fi network your phone is connected to.
This opens up the settings specific to that Wi-Fi network such as speed, security, and IP Address. Just below all this information, you can see a ‘QR Code’ option. Click on this.
The phone will now display a QR Code. You can show this code to your friend or guest so that they can scan this code and connect to the Wi-Fi network.
You don’t need to download any app to scan this QR Code. Simply search for ‘QR Code Scanner’ in Google and there are several web-based apps you can use.
Some smartphones directly display the Wi-Fi password, near the QR Code.
iOS (iPhone and iPad)
Sharing Wi-Fi passwords on Apple devices has its own caveats. First of all, both the devices must be iPhones. Second, you need to list your guest in your contacts. The same goes for your guest. He / she needs to list you in their contacts.
Now, make sure to connect your iPhone to the Wi-Fi network and also turn on the Bluetooth. Do not turn on the hotspot.
In your guest’s iPhone, turn on both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Ask your guest to connect to your Wi-Fi network from the list of available networks.
This action will bring a pop-up on your device asking whether you want to share the Wi-Fi password. Click on the ‘Share Password’ button. That’s it. You successfully shared your Wi-Fi network’s password with your guest.
If you have a guest network and want to share this with your guest, then there is a slight modification. Make sure you are connected to the Guest Network first and also ask your guest to connect to the same guest network.
Once your guest connects to the guest network, you can disconnect from it and connect to the main network.
macOS
Things are very similar in Macs as well. The first thing to note is you can share your Wi-Fi password from a Mac only to other Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, or Mac). Also, you and your guest must have a valid Apple ID.
Then, finally, you and your guest must have the other person in their contacts (using email ID).
If you fulfill all these criteria, then the procedure is the same as what we saw earlier in the case of iPhones.
In addition to sharing the Wi-Fi password like this, Macs also allow you to view the password. There is a special app ‘Keychain Access’. Open this app and select the ‘Login and Passwords’ tab.
Look for the SSID of your Wi-Fi network and double-click on it. This will bring up the attributes of that network. At the bottom, you can click on ‘Show password’ to view the Wi-Fi password.
Conclusion:
Whether you are home or visiting friends or family, you always want to have a reliable internet connection. For this, Wi-Fi is the only option. If your friends visit your place or you visited theirs, you want to share the Wi-Fi password so that you can connect to the internet.
All Wi-Fi Routers allow you to create a guest network so that you can easily share your Wi-Fi without compromising on safety and security. But if you haven’t created a guest network, then you have to share your main Wi-Fi password with your friends.
In this guide, we saw how to share Wi-Fi Password on Windows, Android, iOS, and macOS devices. We highly recommend creating a guest network.
