What s the environment variable for the path to the desktop

Question

I m writing a Windows batch file and want to copy something to the desktop  I think I can use this       UserProfile  Desktop      However  I m thinking  that s probably only going to work on an English OS  Is there a way I can do this in a batch file that will work on any internationalized version   UPDATE  I tried the following batch file   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop FOR  F  usebackq tokens 3 skip 4    i in   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop   DO SET DESKTOPDIR   i FOR  F  usebackq delims     i in   ECHO  DESKTOPDIR    DO SET DESKTOPDIR   i ECHO  DESKTOPDIR    And got this output    S   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders     Desktop    REG EXPAND SZ     USERPROFILE  Desktop   S   FOR  F  usebackq tokens 3 skip 4   i in   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folder s   v Desktop   DO SET DESKTOPDIR  i  S   FOR  F  usebackq delims    i in   ECHO ECHO is on    DO SET DESKTOPDIR  i  S   SET DESKTOPDIR ECHO is on   S   ECHO ECHO is on  ECHO is on

User · Answer

I had a similar problem  and VBScript or PowerShell was not an option  and the code I found in this article did not work for me  I had problems with OS versions and language versions  After some experiments I ve come to this solution   for  f  usebackq tokens 2 3     A in   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v  Desktop    do if   A  REG EXPAND SZ call  reparse set desktopdir   B echo  desktopdir  goto  EOF   reparse    goto  EOF   This code works for me in English and Polish versions of Windows 7 and Windows XP   The  reparse subroutine allows for delayed expansion of environment variables

User · Answer

This should work no matter what language version of Windows it is and no matter where the folder is located  It also doesn t matter whether there are any spaces in the folder path   FOR  F  tokens 2     A IN   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop  FIND I  desktop    DO SET Desktop   B ECHO  Desktop    In case of Windows 2000  and probably NT 4 0  you need to copy reg exe to the  windir  folder manually since it is not available there by default

User · Answer

If you wish to use the    Environment   GetFolderPath  Desktop     from within a cmd exe  you may do so  thanks to MS User Marian Pascalau on this thread   set dkey Desktop set dump powershell exe -NoLogo -NonInteractive  Write-Host    System Environment   GetFolderPath  System Environment SpecialFolder    dkey     for  F   i in    dump    do set dir   i  echo Desktop directory is  dir

User · Answer

EDIT  Use the accepted answer  this will not work if the default location isn t being used  for example  The user moved the desktop to another drive like D  Desktop  At least on Windows XP  Vista and 7 you can use the  quot  UserProfile  Desktop quot  safely  Windows XP en-US it will expand to  quot C  Documents and Settings YourName Desktop quot  Windows XP pt-BR it will expand to  quot C  Documents and Settings YourName Desktop quot  Windows 7 en-US it will expand to  quot C  Users YourName Desktop quot  Windows 7 pt-BR it will expand to  quot C  Usuarios YourName Desktop quot  On XP you can t use this to others folders exept for Desktop My documents turning to Meus Documentos and Local Settings to Configuracoes locais Personaly I thinks this is a bad thing when projecting a OS

User · Answer

I use this code to get the User desktop and Public desktop paths from the registry  tested on Windows XP SP2 pt-PT and Windows 10 b14393 en-US  so it probably works in Vista 7 8 and other languages      get user desktop and public desktop paths for  f  tokens   delims      a in   reg query  HKCU SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop   find  i  REG     do set  batch userdesktop   a  for  f  tokens   delims      a in   reg query  HKLM SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v  Common Desktop    find  i  REG     do set  batch publicdesktop   a      remove everything up to and including   SZ  set  batch userdesktop  batch userdesktop   sz    set  batch publicdesktop  batch publicdesktop   sz        remove leading spaces and TABs  loop if   batch userdesktop  0 1        set  batch userdesktop  batch userdesktop  1    amp  goto loop if   batch publicdesktop  0 1        set  batch publicdesktop  batch publicdesktop  1    amp  goto loop if   batch userdesktop  0 1           set  batch userdesktop  batch userdesktop  1    amp  goto loop if   batch publicdesktop  0 1         set  batch publicdesktop  batch publicdesktop  1    amp  goto loop   The last two lines include a TAB inside the      some text editors add spaces when you press TAB  so make sure you have an actual TAB instead of spaces   I m not sure the code requires setlocal enabledelayedexpansion  it s part of my SETVARS CMD which I call from other batches to set common variables like cpu architecture  account language  windows version and service pack  path to user public desktop  etc

User · Answer

Not only would that not work for an International version of Windows  it would fail if the user had edited the Registry to make their Desktop folder reside somewhere else   You can query the Registry for the file location using the REG command   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop   To get this into a variable use something like this   FOR  F  usebackq tokens 3 skip 4    i in   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop   DO SET DESKTOPDIR   i FOR  F  usebackq delims     i in   ECHO  DESKTOPDIR    DO SET DESKTOPDIR   i ECHO  DESKTOPDIR

User · Answer

While I realize this is a bit of an older post  I thought this might help people in a similar situation   I made a quick one line VBScript to pull info for whatever special folder you would like  no error checking though  and it works like this   Create a file  GetShellFolder vbs  with the following line   WScript Echo WScript CreateObject  WScript Shell   SpecialFolders WScript Arguments 0     I always make sure to copy cscript exe  32-bit version  to the same folder as the batch file I am running this from  I will assume you are doing the same  I have had situations where users have somehow removed C  Windows system32 from their path  or managed to get rid of cscript exe  or it s infected or otherwise doesn t work    Now copy the file to be copied to the same folder and create a batch file in there with the following lines   for  f  delims     i in        dp0cscript exe     dp0GetShellFolder vbs   Desktop    nologo     DO SET SHELLDIR   i copy  y    dp0 lt file to copy gt     SHELLDIR   lt file to copy gt     In the above code you can replace  Desktop  with any valid special folder  Favorites  StartMenu  etc  - the full official list is at https   msdn microsoft com en-us library 0ea7b5xe 28v vs 84 29 aspx  and of course  lt file to copy gt  with the actual file you want placed there   This saves you from trying to access the registry  which you can t do as a limited user anyway  and should be simple enough to adapt to multiple applications   Oh and for those that don t know the    dp0  is just the directory from which the script is being called   It works for UNC paths as well which makes the batch file using it extremely portable   That specifically ends in a trailing     though so it can look a little odd at first glance

User · Answer

To be safe  you should use the proper APIs in Powershell  or VBScript  Using PowerShell    Environment   GetFolderPath  Desktop     Copy something using Powershell   Copy-Item  home   txt   Environment   GetFolderPath  Desktop      Here is a VBScript-example to get the desktop path   dim WSHShell  desktop  pathstring  objFSO set objFSO CreateObject  Scripting FileSystemObject   Set WSHshell   CreateObject  WScript Shell   desktop   WSHShell SpecialFolders  Desktop   pathstring   objFSO GetAbsolutePathName desktop  WScript Echo pathstring

User · Answer

I know this is kind of an old topic  but I would use the Powershell variable    env UserProfile    To use it to get to the desktop  it would be   cd  env UserProfile desktop   This works both locally and remotely on windows 7  Hope this is useful as I ran across a situation where a client machine didn t have a value in  home

User · Answer

you could also open a DOS command prompt and execute the set command   This will give you an idea what environment variables are available on your system   E g  - since you where specifically asking for a non-english Windows - heres is an example of my own German Edition  Window7-64bit      set   env txt type env txt  ALLUSERSPROFILE C  ProgramData APPDATA C  Users SOF AppData Roaming CommonProgramFiles C  Program Files Common Files CommonProgramFiles x86  C  Program Files  x86  Common Files CommonProgramW6432 C  Program Files Common Files COMPUTERNAME VMSOF ComSpec C  Windows system32 cmd exe FP NO HOST CHECK NO HOMEDRIVE C  HOMEPATH  Users SOF LOCALAPPDATA C  Users SOF AppData Local LOGONSERVER   VMSOF NUMBER OF PROCESSORS 2 OS Windows NT Path C  Windows system32 C  Windows C  Windows System32 Wbem C  Windows System32 WindowsPowerShell v1 0  C  Program Files TortoiseSVN bin C  Program Files  x86  CMake 2 8 bin C  Program Files  x86  emacs-22 3 bin C  Program Files  x86  GnuWin32 bin  PATHEXT  COM  EXE  BAT  CMD  VBS  VBE  JS  JSE  WSF  WSH  MSC PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURE AMD64 PROCESSOR IDENTIFIER AMD64 Family 15 Model 67 Stepping 3  AuthenticAMD PROCESSOR LEVEL 15 PROCESSOR REVISION 4303 ProgramData C  ProgramData ProgramFiles C  Program Files ProgramFiles x86  C  Program Files  x86  ProgramW6432 C  Program Files PROMPT  P G PSModulePath C  Windows system32 WindowsPowerShell v1 0 Modules  PUBLIC C  Users Public SESSIONNAME Console SystemDrive C  SystemRoot C  Windows TEMP C  Users SOF AppData Local Temp TMP C  Users SOF AppData Local Temp USERDOMAIN VMSOF USERNAME SOF USERPROFILE C  Users SOF VBOX INSTALL PATH C  Program Files Sun VirtualBox  VS90COMNTOOLS C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 9 0 Common7 Tools  windir C  Windows

User · Answer

This is not a solution but I hope it helps  This comes close except that when the KEY    userprofile  desktop the copy fails even though zdesktop  userprofile  desktop   I think because the embedded  userprofile  is not getting translated   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop gt z out for  f  tokens 3 skip 4    t in  z out  do set zdesktop   t copy myicon  zdesktop  set zdesktop  del z out   So it sucessfully parses out the REG key but if the key contains an embedded  var  it doesn t get translated during the copy command

User · Answer

I found that the best solution is to use a vbscript together with the batch file   Here is the batch file    ECHO OFF FOR  F  usebackq delims     i in   cscript findDesktop vbs   DO SET DESKTOPDIR   i ECHO  DESKTOPDIR    Here is findDesktop vbs file   set WshShell   WScript CreateObject  WScript Shell   strDesktop   WshShell SpecialFolders  Desktop   wscript echo strDesktop    There may be other solutions but I personally find this one less hackish   I tested this on an English PC and also a French PC - it seems to work  Windows XP    HTH   Iulian Serbanoiu

User · Answer

Quite old topic  But I want to give my 2 cents     I ve slightly modified tomasz86 solution  to look in the old style  Shell Folders  instead of  User Shell Folders   so i don t need to expand the envvar  userprofile   Also there is no dependency from powershell vbscript etc      for  f  usebackq tokens 2 3     A in   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer Shell Folders   v  Desktop    do if   A  REG SZ  set desktopdir   B echo  desktopdir    Hope it helps

User · Answer

TL DR  HOMEDRIVE  HOMEPATH  Desktop seems to be the safest way  Discussion Assumptions about which drive a thing is on are quite fragile in Windows as it lacks a unified directory tree where mounts would map to directories internally  Therefore the  HOMEDRIVE  variable is important to reference to make sure you re on the right one  it isn t always C      Non-English locales will usually have localized names for things like  quot Desktop quot  and  quot Pictures quot  and whatnot  but fortunately they are all aliases that point to Desktop  which seems to be the underlying canonical directory name regardless of locale  we use this safely here in Japan  Thailand  Israel and the US   The big quirk comes with determining whether  UserProfile  points to the user s actual profile base dir  or their Desktop or somewhere completely different  I m not really a Windows dev  but what I ve found is the profile dir is for settings  but the  HOMEPATH  is for the user s own files  so this points to the directory root that leads to Desktop Downloads Pictures etc  This tends to make  HOMEDRIVE  HOMEPATH  Desktop the safest way

User · Answer

KB s answer to use  Environment   GetFolderPath  Desktop   is obviously the official Windows API for doing this   However  if you re working interactively at the prompt  or just want something that works on your machine  the tilda     character refers to the current user s home folder  So   desktop is the user s desktop folder

User · Answer

Multilingual Version  tested on Japanese OS Batch File   set getdesk REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop FOR  f  delims       G IN    getdesk    find   SZ    DO set desktop   G set desktop1  desktop  USERPROFILE     cd   userprofile   desktop1   set getdesk  set desktop1  set desktop

User · Answer

in windows 7 this returns the desktop path    FOR  F  usebackq tokens 3     i in   REG QUERY  HKCU Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer User Shell Folders   v Desktop   DO SET DESKTOPDIR   i  FOR  F  usebackq delims     i in   ECHO  DESKTOPDIR    DO SET DESKTOPDIR   i  ECHO  DESKTOPDIR

User · Answer

Dave Webb s answer is probably the way to go  The only other thing I can think of are the CSIDLs      CSIDL DESKTOPDIRECTORY          The file system directory used to   physically store file objects on the   desktop  which should not be confused   with the desktop folder itself   A   typical path is C  Documents and   Settings username Desktop    I have no idea how to get hold of those from the command line  though

[windows] What's the environment variable for the path to the desktop?

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