Access the Environment Variables of Windows with PowerShell

Summary

On UNIX-like OS, it provide commands that allows you to access environment variables.
Examples are export and set…etc.

How to get/set the Environment Variables of Windows on command line?

Prerequisites

• PowerShell v5.1
• .NET Core v3.1
• Windows 10 v21H1

Method

PowerShell is available to access .NET. So, using Environment.GetEnvironment andEnvironment.SetEnvironment to get and set the Environment Variables of Windows.

In this post uses the Test1 environment variable as an example.

Get

[Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Test1", "User")

Set (Updating)

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Test1", "ABCDEFG", "User")

Set (Deleting)

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Test1", "", "User")

References

• about Environment Variables – PowerShell | Microsoft Docs
• Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable Method (System) | Microsoft Docs