The documentation for Environment.UserName seems to be a bit conflicting:
On the same page it says:
Gets the user name of the person who is currently logged on to the Windows operating system.
AND
displays the user name of the person who started the current thread
If you test Environment.UserName using RunAs, it will give you the RunAs user account name, not the user originally logged on to Windows.
Use System.Windows.Forms.SystemInformation.UserName
for the actually logged in user as Environment.UserName
still returns the account being used by the current process.
I've tried all the previous answers and found the answer on MSDN after none of these worked for me. See 'UserName4' for the correct one for me.
I'm after the Logged in User, as displayed by:
<asp:LoginName ID="LoginName1" runat="server" />
Here's a little function I wrote to try them all. My result is in the comments after each row.
protected string GetLoggedInUsername()
{
string UserName = System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name; // Gives NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
String UserName2 = Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name; // Gives NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
String UserName3 = Environment.UserName; // Gives SYSTEM
string UserName4 = HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name; // Gives actual user logged on (as seen in <ASP:Login />)
string UserName5 = System.Windows.Forms.SystemInformation.UserName; // Gives SYSTEM
return UserName4;
}
Calling this function returns the logged in username by return.
Update: I would like to point out that running this code on my Local server instance shows me that Username4 returns "" (an empty string), but UserName3 and UserName5 return the logged in User. Just something to beware of.
If you are in a network of users, then the username will be different:
Environment.UserName
- Will Display format : 'Username'
rather than
System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name
- Will Display format : 'NetworkName\Username'
Choose the format you want.
Here is the code (but not in C#):
Private m_CurUser As String
Public ReadOnly Property CurrentUser As String
Get
If String.IsNullOrEmpty(m_CurUser) Then
Dim who As System.Security.Principal.IIdentity = System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent()
If who Is Nothing Then
m_CurUser = Environment.UserDomainName & "\" & Environment.UserName
Else
m_CurUser = who.Name
End If
End If
Return m_CurUser
End Get
End Property
Here is the code (now also in C#):
private string m_CurUser;
public string CurrentUser
{
get
{
if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(m_CurUser))
{
var who = System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();
if (who == null)
m_CurUser = System.Environment.UserDomainName + @"\" + System.Environment.UserName;
else
m_CurUser = who.Name;
}
return m_CurUser;
}
}
try this
ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT UserName FROM Win32_ComputerSystem");
ManagementObjectCollection collection = searcher.Get();
string username = (string)collection.Cast<ManagementBaseObject>().First()["UserName"];
now it looks better
For a Windows Forms app that was to be distributed to several users, many of which log in over vpn, I had tried several ways which all worked for my local machine testing but not for others. I came across a Microsoft article that I adapted and works.
using System;
using System.Security.Principal;
namespace ManageExclusion
{
public static class UserIdentity
{
// concept borrowed from
// https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.principal.windowsidentity(v=vs.110).aspx
public static string GetUser()
{
IntPtr accountToken = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Token;
WindowsIdentity windowsIdentity = new WindowsIdentity(accountToken);
return windowsIdentity.Name;
}
}
}
Get the current Windows username:
using System;
class Sample
{
public static void Main()
{
Console.WriteLine();
// <-- Keep this information secure! -->
Console.WriteLine("UserName: {0}", Environment.UserName);
}
}
String myUserName = Environment.UserName
This will give you output - your_user_name
I went over most of the answers here and none of them gave me the right user name.
In my case I wanted to get the logged in user name, while running my app from a different user, like when shift+right click on a file and "Run as a different user".
The answers I tried gave me the 'other' username.
This blog post supplies a way to get the logged in user name, which works even in my scenario:
https://smbadiwe.github.io/post/track-activities-windows-service/
It uses Wtsapi
In case it's helpful to others, when I upgraded an app from c#.net 3.5 app to Visual Studio 2017 this line of code User.Identity.Name.Substring(4);
threw this error "startIndex cannot be larger than length of string" (it didn't baulk before).
It was happy when I changed it to System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name
however I ended up using Environment.UserName;
to get the logged in Windows user and without the domain portion.
Use:
System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name
That will be the logon name.
Just in case someone is looking for user Display Name as opposed to User Name, like me.
Here's the treat :
System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.UserPrincipal.Current.DisplayName
Add Reference to System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement
in your project.
You may also want to try using:
Environment.UserName;
Like this...:
string j = "Your WindowsXP Account Name is: " + Environment.UserName;
Hope this has been helpful.
I totally second the other answers, but I would like to highlight one more method which says
String UserName = Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name;
The above method returned me the username in the format: DomainName\UserName. For example, EUROPE\UserName
Which is different from:
String UserName = Environment.UserName;
Which displayed in the format: UserName
And finally:
String UserName = System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name;
which gave: NT AUTHORITY\IUSR
(while running the application on IIS server) and DomainName\UserName
(while running the application on a local server).
Try the property: Environment.UserName
.
I tried several combinations from existing answers, but they were giving me
DefaultAppPool
IIS APPPOOL
IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool
I ended up using
string vUserName = User.Identity.Name;
Which gave me the actual users domain username only.
Source: Stackoverflow.com