%USERPROFILE%

The directory pointed at with the environment variable %userprofile% stores personal data of a specific user.

This value is alse found in the registry in the value of ProfileImagePath under the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-SID.

The value of %userprofile% usually is c:\Users\username (username being lowercase of %username%?)

Apparently, in Windows 10, the variable %CSIDL_PROFILE% is equivalently used for %USERPROFILE%.

Default sudirectories

Predefined (or pre-installed) sub directories are

Name	German name	Junction to
3D Objects	3D
AppData
Application Data	Anwendungsdaten	`%UserName%\AppData\Roaming%` (aka `%AppData%`)
Contacts
Cookies	Cookies	%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\INetCookies
Desktop
Documents	Dokumente/Documents?
Downloads	Download
Favorites	Favoriten
Links	Links
Local Settings	Lokale Einstellungen	%LOCALAPPDATA%
MicrosoftEdgeBackups	MicrosoftEdgeBackups
Music	Musik
My Documents	Eigene Dateien	Documents
NetHood	Netzwerkumgebung	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts
OneDrive	OneDrive
PrintHood	Druckumgebung	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Printer Shortcuts
Recent	Recent	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
Saved Games	?
Searches	Suchen
SendTo	SendTo	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
Start Menu	Startmenü	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
Templates	Vorlagen	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Templates
Videos	Videos

The junctions' (aka reparse points) name and target can be shown in cmd.exe with dir /al.

%USERPROFILE% also stores the registry hive for the current user (HKEY_CURRENT_USER) in the file %USERPROFILE%\NTUSER.DAT.

Tilde and $home in Powershell

In PowerShell, the home directory of a user is stored in the automatic variable $home.

PowerShell allows to abbreviate $env:USERPROFILE or $home with the tilde (~):

PS C:\> ls $env:USERPROFILE
PS C:\> ls $home
PS C:\> ls ~
PS C:\> cd ~
PS C:\> cd ~/Documents

Thus, the tilde seems to mimic the function it also has in bash.

Getting the user profile's path in PowerShell

A possible way to determine the path of a user's profile in PowerShell is like so:

PS C:\> [System.Environment]::GetFolderPath([System.Environment+SpecialFolder]::UserProfile)
C:\Users\Rene

%USERPROFILE%

Default sudirectories

Tilde and $home in Powershell

Getting the user profile's path in PowerShell

See also