So I seem to have lost the two passwords I set up for my gdrive crypt last year 
This is only an issue because I want to set up an encrypted backup and reading through the documentation, it is advised to use the same passwords when going from one encrypted remote to another.
Is there any way of retrieving the passwords from the .conf file? Or am I totally out of luck?
Unfortunately, I do not think so as that would defeat the purpose of hashing the passwords if you just reverse them.
You can copy the passwords and just create a new remote with a different name or you can use a new password. I’m not sure why having a different remote crypt with a different password would matter to be honest.
Would the downside of going between two different encrypted remotes be that my server would need to decrypt the data before passing it on?
If that was the case then would that be a case of additional processor load?
If you want to setup the same crypt remote on a different machine, you can simply copy the current crypt remote settings from your existing rclone.conf to the rclone.conf on the new machine. This will preserve the passwords.
If you really want the plain password back, it is also possible, but requires you to write a few lines of Go code. rcloneonly stores a obsuced version of the password in the config file, which can revleal'ed later to regain the plain password. By designrcloneonly allows torclone obscurethe password from the command line, but there is norclone reveal`command.
To do this you have to use the functions in https://godoc.org/github.com/ncw/rclone/fs/config/obscure
Thanks B4dM4n, much appreciated
Ihave the same problem. A year or so ago, I tried firts time rclone on gdrive and crypt. I made some different configs, and I wrote down my password and password salt, as I always do.
Now it turns out it is not correct 
And I have a decent library. I copy thr conf file when I jeed access on another setup, but would be great to avoid rebuilding my library and to actually have the passwords. I see the link you posted, but what and how should I proceed, can you please guide me with this? Many thanks m
It shouldn't matter if you only have the hashed password. Copying that directly into the config file should work just as well. I don't see that this really limits what you can do with your encryption. I don't know if the password is actually hashed though. The documentation says it is "obscured" which probably means it's not and should in theory be reversible.
If you wanted to set a new encryption key or unencrypt your data already on your drive however you have to redownload everything and upload it via the new crypt. In case of a very big amount of data you could use a cheap google compute virtual machine to do the whole operation within the google network however, effectively giving you massive bandwidth for the job.
I also have the same problem as these two users. I created a remote, used the built in password generator. I copy and pasted the unobscured password to a password manager, due to the well known bug with wayland, the copy operation failed to move the data to the clipboard and as a result, I ended up with a password from a previous remote which was already in the clipboard. I didn't notice due to its similarity.
So I have the hashed password but not the original. I am aware of the obscure command however I can't find an unobscure command. Is there such a thing? Would it be possible to add this as a feature of rclone?
I actually had to stop using wayland after this incident and switched to X, I need an OS that is capable of a copy and paste operation.