The password field in Filezilla Site Manager is all asterisks that cannot be copied yet a simple trick can reveal the saved password in Filezilla.
Yesterday I shared How to Copy Saved Passwords’ in Firefox but didn’t know it was an option in Firefox already. Thanks to Abhik of ItsAbhik.com for pointing that out.
Today I will share yet another such trick that reveals FTP password stored in Filezilla. The password field in Filezilla is all asterisks, which you cannot copy (I have tested right click and there is no option to copy the password :D). So let me share a simple trick that I use to reveal the saved password. Feel free to share if you know something simpler.
Right Click the Site in the site manager and select the Export Option.
It will create an XML file for the site with username and password like
<User>SavedUsername</User> <Pass>YourSavedPassword</Pass>
Now we have the password we needed.
If you want to recover a Quick Connect Manager password, it’s a bit tricky. You have to get hold of the hidden file recentservers.xml file under the hidden Filezilla user folder for your OS. The trick to find the recentservers.xml file as well as other hidden Filezilla files for your OS is detailed here by Dan of AlmostGeek.com. Your Quick Connect Manager Password is stored in plain text format in the recentservers.xml file.
Filezilla never stores passwords in encrypted format and so they are available in plain text format for you to grab. There are pros and cons of it but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Further Reading …
And here’s what to do if Filezilla is on other HDD from which you can’t boot (my case, sadly)
http://www.digitalette.com/web/recover-filezilla-ftp-passwords/
Why do we need to be doing that when we can just export the data and view it?
Thanks Shabbir for the tip. Though I am already using the export feature of FileZilla (saved my back lots of times), I didn’t aware that we couldn’t Quick Connect details.
And, thanks for mentioning me. 🙂
The pleasure is all mine Abhik.