Have you ever wondered where do all those passwords get stored that you've been using on your Android phone? Obviously, you've been using social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram. You've been connecting to more than one Wi-Fi network and ordering food or booking cabs. You’ve been using numerous complex passwords at multiple places. But somehow, in a click of a button, these passwords get retrieved & auto-filled within fraction of a second, saving you both the time and the frustration to do so manually each and every time. So,certainly these passwords are getting recorded somewhere, right? How else is your phone reiterating that exact combination of numbers & alphabets that exists only in your memory?

Passwords, as you know, act as a key for you to access various sites, services & networks. Forgetting them surely puts you in a precarious position, which too you're surely familiar with. Thankfully, Android phones are programmed in a way so they can store your passwords locally on the device itself. These devices can store countless passwords so that you don't have to record it elsewhere, plus it cuts the hassle of typing your password each time you access the same website or re-install an earlier used app. But due to security reasons not all passwords are stored at a single location or in a single folder on your Android Phone. You cannot retrieve these passwords with a single technique or password retrieving app. So, let's individually look at few of these password storage methods and locations:

Website Passwords used on Google Chrome –

If you've been using the popular browsing application Chrome for surfing the web, then you must have already visited numerous sites that each require a password.  In order to view these saved passwords that you have used in the past, you just have to dig a little bit deeper as this app has been storing all those passwords under a certain folder, so that they cannot be accessed quickly by anyone.
But before you start, make sure to check if your Chrome’s Saved Passwords feature is turned on in your Android Phone or not. There is a possibility you may have even enabled or disabled it in the past without realizing it. To check it whether you have or not, simply follow the following instructions:

Step 1:Open Google Chrome application on your phone. Then click on the Menu button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. It’s denoted by the three dots.

Step 2:Then tap the 'Settings' option. Scroll down to ‘Passwords'.

Step 3:On the next screen, check whether ‘Save Passwords’ feature is switched on or not. If it’s on, then don’t change anything. You’ve already been storing website & user-account passwords accessed through this app. But if it’s turned off, then tap the ‘Save passwords’ toggle switch to the ‘on position’ (the switch will turn from grey to blue). And in the future, if ever do want to avoid saving passwords then simply tap the toggle switch again to ‘off position’ to turn off the password-saving feature.

Once you have double checked the Save Password feature, the following steps show you how you can access those passwords stored by Chrome on your Android phone:

Step 1: Launch the Chrome browser on your Android phone and again tap on three-dots on the top-right hand corner. Under options, select the option that says 'Settings'. This will launch the Chrome settings.

Step 2: On the next screen, click on the option that says 'Passwords'. This is exactly where you'll be able to access all the Chrome passwords stored on your phone.

Step 3: You will be able to find all of your saved passwords on this screen itself. It's in the form of a list. Tap on any single entry to view the hidden password for it. And do remember, you might need to enter your phone’s passcode to be able to access those passwords.

Passwords used for Wi-Fi Networks -

It's not unusual for you to use more than one Wi-Fi network. One network at home, next at office & maybe a third one at the airport or a train station. It won't be easy to remember so many passwords especially when you weren't the one choosing those passwords in the first place. Before you try to obtain the Wi-Fi passwords on your Android phone, keep in mind that you are going to need root access to your phone first.Complete that, then perform the following steps:

Step 1: Open Google Play Store. Download and install the ES File Explorer app. It is basically your average file manager but it also works as a Wi-Fi password finder for any Android devices as well.

Step 2: After completing the installation, open the app on your android phone. Then click on those threehorizontal lines on the top-left hand corner and turn on the option that says 'Root Explorer'. This allows the app to access all the root files on your android phone, including the files that aren’t related to storing passwords.

Step 3: Next, navigate to the following path "Local > Device > System > etc >Wi-Fi" using the app and locate the file named "wpa_supplicant.conf". Once you’ve located, open this fileand you will access all your Wi-Fi passwords at a single location. Kindly do make sure that you don’t end up editing the file in anyway or else you'll end up having problems with your Wi-Fi connectivity.

Conclusion –
So, there you have it. Now you know that Android Phones store your passwords in hidden vaults on your device’s storage. If you ever do end up losing a password or are just a curious savvy user, you have learned the exact technique on how to locate those stored passwords on your Android phone. It wasn’t difficult, only a certain technique was involved.

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