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It is because of encryption. When you are capturing normally, without monitor mode, your WiFi network interface is performing the decryption and the packets that are captured are post decryption.

In monitor mode you're capturing the packets as they are on the air, pre decryption. You have to give Wireshark sufficient information to decrypt them - Wireshark doesn't know the decryption keys and they aren't sent over the air unencrypted as that would defeat the purpose.

Presumably you're using monitor mode because you want to scan packets sent in the air not intended for your capturing device. Note that if WPA3 is used then knowing the SSID password is not enough in order to decrypt packets between two other devices not the capturing device, even if you do capture the EAPOL handshake.

https://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsug_html_chunked/Ch80211Keys.html https://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/WLAN