How to get the connected wifi network ssid?

Question

I want to obtain the currently connected wifi networks ssid in a bash script. I am trying to write a backup script where the script will perform a backup to a NAS server if it's connected to my home wifi network. I have looked into the ip route command but it only returns some basic information - enter image description here

score 21 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 19 '13 at 20:01

21

iwgetid -r

or

iwgetid wlan0 -r

edited Oct 19 '13 at 20:01

Seth

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answered Oct 19 '13 at 18:50

nmset

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Work perfect on Ubuntu 16.0.4!! – atrujillofalcon Apr 25 '17 at 19:01
for python `sudo iwgetid -r` works for me. (raspberry pi) – Soner from The Ottoman Empire Sep 05 '18 at 13:23

Luis Alvarado · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-12T22:15:09.327

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The following should provide what you are looking for assuming you are connected using 1 wireless device:

nmcli -t -f ssid dev wifi| cut -d\' -f2

edited Jun 12 '18 at 22:15

answered Apr 18 '13 at 06:43

Luis Alvarado

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it's returning all the connected networks. Can I find only the connected network? – Chan Apr 18 '13 at 06:45
Try it like this and let me know: nmcli -t -f active,ssid dev wifi| cut -d\' -f2 – Luis Alvarado Apr 18 '13 at 06:46
Still returning many results – Chan Apr 18 '13 at 06:47
Can you pastebin what you are seeing as output? – Luis Alvarado Apr 18 '13 at 06:48
this no longer works – j123b567 Jun 06 '18 at 15:40
@j123b567 Hi, I just had time to test this again and it works correctly. Both of them actually. Tested on Ubuntu 18.04 – Luis Alvarado Jun 10 '18 at 15:35
@LuisAlvarado can you please post your output of `nmcli dev wifi` and `env -i bash --noprofile --norc -c "nmcli dev wifi"`? – j123b567 Jun 11 '18 at 13:24
@j123b567 this would be the output https://imgur.com/a/ZtS6dM3 – Luis Alvarado Jun 11 '18 at 19:30
@LuisAlvarado mine is similar. So how can `|grep yes| cut -d\' -f2` works with this output? – j123b567 Jun 12 '18 at 16:52
@j123b567 yes I see what you mean, the other one is totally broken. Most likely at the moment it was working before and then after an update it broke. I will remove that one. Thank you buddy – Luis Alvarado Jun 12 '18 at 22:15
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This works for me: `nmcli -t -f active,ssid dev wifi | grep '^yes' | cut -d: -f2 `. – Violet Shreve Jun 05 '19 at 21:34
@JacobEvanShreve Yes that one also works nicely. Thank you friend. – Luis Alvarado Jun 05 '19 at 22:01

Rémi · Answer 3 · 2013-04-18T10:21:39.483

This command returns the SSID of the connected wireless adapter (assuming you only have one).

iwconfig | grep ESSID | sed -e 's/.*ESSID:"\(.*\)".*/\1/'

It also print warning on the terminal but on stderr so it doesn't matter

remi@host~$id:~$ id=$(iwconfig | grep ESSID | sed -e 's/.*ESSID:"\(.*\)".*/\1/')
eth0      no wireless extensions.
lo        no wireless extensions.
virbr0    no wireless extensions.
tap0      no wireless extensions.

remi@host:~$ echo $id
CISPI

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 06 '18 at 15:52

With NetworkManager-1.8.4, this produced the correct result

LANG=C nmcli -t -f active,ssid dev wifi | grep ^yes | cut -d: -f2-

There is a reason for every part of the command

LANG=C is because we are using grep on localized string so force english
nmcli ... -f active,ssid ... causes to print ssid with active status in form yes:myssid no:otherssid
grep ^yes we want to filter active connections, but not SSIDs with text "yes" so it is the reason for ^
cut ... -f2- prints the rest of the line after the first separator so we can have SSID with separator in it

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 18 '13 at 07:15

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How 'bout iwconfig wlan0 | sed -e '/ESSID/!d' -e 's/.*ESSID:"/"/'?

answered Apr 18 '13 at 07:15

jdthood

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score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Jul 05 '15 at 16:27

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nmcli -t -f NAME connection show --active

-t Makes the output 'terse' so no headers
-f NAME Shows only the ssid
--active Shows only the active connections

edited Jul 05 '15 at 16:27

muru

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answered Jul 05 '15 at 15:52

John Mehorter

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This prints the NAME of connection and not the SSID. NAME usually corresponds with SSID but it is not always true. NAME of NetworkManager connection can be changed to any random value. – j123b567 Jun 06 '18 at 15:36

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 16 '15 at 05:25

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I tried this:

    iwconfig wlan0 | grep ESSID | cut -d\" -f2

answered Dec 16 '15 at 05:25

John Goofy

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How to get the connected wifi network ssid?

7 Answers7