How-To

View Hidden Passwords Behind Asterisks in Chrome and Firefox

By Jeff Butts

Updated April 2, 2024

Forget your password? Don’t jump straight to the reset hassle. View passwords hidden behind asterisks in Chrome and Firefox with these tips.

Almost all browsers hide the password field with asterisks for security purposes. Having your browser save them saves you the hassle of remembering them all. But if your password wasn’t saved for some reason, and you have a complex passcode, it’s nice to be able to see what’s behind the curtain. Following this guide, you’ll learn how to view passwords hidden behind asterisks in Chrome and Firefox.

How to View Passwords Hidden Behind Asterisks in Google Chrome

Let’s assume that the website you’re using doesn’t have a show password button or option. If it does, click it—it’ll do this for you. If it doesn’t, however, follow these steps.

1. Open any website where you have your password saved, right-click on the password field, and select Inspect.
   
2. When the HTML Editor opens, look for input type=”password” field and change “password” to “text” before pressing Enter to save.
   
   • An easy way to find that line of code is to hit Ctrl+F and type password in the search field, then use the arrow icons to search through the results.
     
3. Once you’ve changed input type=”password” to input type=”text”, your password should appear as plain text on the website you’re using.
   

How to Show Hidden Passwords in Firefox

The process is virtually the same for Firefox users.

1. Right-click the password field and press Inspect.
   
2. The Inspect panel will appear beneath the page. The structure will be slightly different, but look for type=”password” in the select HTML snippet. Change “password” to “text” before pressing Enter to reveal your password.
   
3. You can change the type value back to password after, or you can simply refresh the page. When you fresh, the page should reset back to its default, hiding the password from view again.

Saving Yourself Some Hassle

Forgetting a password can be frustrating, but this trick can definitely help ease the pain. If the password is saved in your browser, you can use the Inspect console to quickly view that password hidden behind asterisks, whether you’re using Google Chrome or Firefox. The same trick works similarly in most modern browsers.