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This tutorial explains how to get the user's home directory in Java and lists some sample code to guide you through the topic.

For a multi-user operating system, each user has a file system directory; this directory is called the user's home directory. There are multiple ways to find the user home directory in Java. Let's look at each of them.

System.getProperty()Get the user's home directory using the method in Java

The class in Java Systemhas a Propertiesobject that stores different properties and configurations of the current working environment. It also holds the user's home directory.

We can getProperty()access these properties using the system property method of this class. We need to pass the name of the system property we want to view. In our case, it will be system.properties user.home.

The following code demonstrates how it works.

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String userHomeDir = System.getProperty("user.home");
    System.out.printf("The User Home Directory is %s", userHomeDir);
  }
}

Output:

The User Home Directory is C:\Users\Lenovo

If you are curious and want to view all system properties, you can use getProperties()the method. getProperties()The code for the method is shown below.

import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Properties;
public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Properties props = System.getProperties();
    for (Map.Entry<Object, Object> prop : props.entrySet())
      System.out.println("Property: +" + prop.getKey() + "\tValue: " + prop.getValue());
  }
}

Get the user's home directory using the Apache CommonsIO library in Java

Apache Commons is a very powerful library that can be used to get the home directory using CommonsIOthe library's FileUtilsclass.

We can simply use getUserDirectory()the method of this class to view the user's home directory. It returns a Fileobject representing the home directory. We can also getUserDirectoryPath()get Stringthe path of the home directory using the method.

The code and output of these methods are shown below.

import java.io.File;
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    File homeDir = FileUtils.getUserDirectory();
    String homeDirPath = FileUtils.getUserDirectoryPath();
    System.out.printf("The User Home Directory is %s\n", homeDir);
    System.out.printf("The path of User Home Directory is %s", homeDirPath);
  }
}

Output:

The User Home Directory is C:\Users\Lenovo
The path of User Home Directory is C:\Users\Lenovo

System.getenv()Get the user's home directory using the method in Java

SystemThe method of the class getenv()is used to get the value of the system environment variable. We need to pass the name of the environment variable we want to access.

To get the home directory of a user, we need to use a string USERPROFILE. The following program demonstrates getenv()the working of the method.

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String userHomeDir = System.getenv("USERPROFILE");
    System.out.printf("The User Home Directory is %s", userHomeDir);
  }
}

Output:

The User Home Directory is C:\Users\Lenovo

You can also use this method to view all environment variables. If you want to know more about the system environment variables, run the following program.

import java.util.Map;
public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Map<String, String> envVars = System.getenv();
    for (Map.Entry<String, String> var : envVars.entrySet())
      System.out.println(var.getKey() + " ---> " + var.getValue());
  }
}

Summarize

In this guide, we will learn how to get the user's home directory in Java. For some Windows platforms running older Java versions (prior to Java 8), due to a bug with ID 4787931, System.getProperty()the method may not provide the desired results.

Another similar bug (bug ID 6519127) also existed. As a result, getProperty()the method produced undesirable results. However, both bugs have been resolved.

In most cases, getProperty()the method works fine, but we can use an alternative System.getenv()method to get the user home directory.