I know there are many 3rd party applications that provide this functionality. I'm wondering how they work.
Is it not simply enough to just send the EM_SETPASSWORDCHAR message to the passworded control with a wParam value of 0?
This is what the Windows SDK says about the wParam:
wParam
The character to be displayed in place of the characters typed by the user. If this parameter is zero, the control removes the current password character and displays the characters typed by the user.
So what I'm wondering is if this is the right way to implement this feature, or if applications that do reveal the passwords of edit controls are using something a lot more complicated?
Edit: The edit control that is password protected is not in my own application. It is some random 3rd party software I have running which saved my password. I am trying to retrieve the contents of this field. Thus, I want to create an application that interacts with this 3rd party software.