How to Reveal Passwords hidden as Asterisks/Stars/Dots

Most modern browsers offer the capability of remembering usernames and passwords. Most of us use this feature to automatically save our passwords in order to log in to our favorite websites more quickly. What if you forget the saved password?

Some web browsers intelligently hide passwords using stars(asterisks or dots) and provide no way in which a user can recover his password by simply looking at what the browser shows. Here are some tips and tricks that you can use in such a situation to reveal your password for a website when you have forgotten it but your browser remembers it.

Reveal Password Asterisk
Enter your Password!

Use Developer Options to show passwords

Open the website for which your browser has the saved password, then right click on the password box and click Inspect element.

A code like this would be displayed:-

<input type="password" class="inputtext" name="pass" id="pass">

Change the type from password to text so that the code looks like:-

<input type="text" class="inputtext" name="pass" id="pass">

Your password would be immediately visible.

JavaScript to Reveal Hidden Passwords

A simple JavaScript code can be used to view passwords in web browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer and Opera in a popup as an alert message (If the code does not seem to work on your browser, precede it with "javascript:" without quotes as this part gets removed while copying the code due to safety reasons.) To use the JavaScript, open your web browser, open the webpage for which the password is obfuscated, copy and paste the following code in the address bar and press Enter.

javascript: var p=r(); function r(){var g=0;var x=false;var x=z(document.forms);g=g+1;var w=window.frames;for(var k=0;k<w.length;k++) {var x = ((x) || (z(w[k].document.forms)));g=g+1;}if (!x) alert('Password not found in ' + g + ' forms');}function z(f){var b=false;for(var i=0;i<f.length;i++) {var e=f[i].elements;for(var j=0;j<e.length;j++) {if (h(e[j])) {b=true}}}return b;}function h(ej){var s='';if (ej.type=='password'){s=ej.value;if (s!=''){prompt('Password found ', s)}else{alert('Password is blank')}return true;}}

Note: Mozilla Firefox does not support directly executing JavaScript. Firefox users can try the alternative methods mentioned in this article.

Show password bookmarklet

Alternatively, you can use this Show Password Bookmarklet by dragging it to your Bookmarks bar to instantly view hidden passwords at the click of a button. This bookmarklet works on most browsers including Mozilla Firefox.

Show Password
Password Recovery Popup in Google Chrome

Google Chrome Extension

Show Password is a Google Chrome extension which automatically converts scrambled hidden passwords into readable form. To use this nifty extension, just open the webpage with the hidden password and take your mouse cursor over the field containing the hidden password. The add-on will automatically reveal the password to you.

Note: These tips can also be used by others to hack your passwords. To avoid such situations, I would advise you to stay alert when others use your computer.

Author About

Akhilesh Sharma maintains and writes Tweak And Trick. He is a technology enthusiast and a science student.
You can contact him at tweakandtrick@gmail.com.

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