PowerShell: Environment variables

Here are three ways to add an environment variable while using PowerShell on Windows.

Temporary Variable

Set a variable for the current session.

$env:MyVariable = "MyValue"

For example, you can temporary set the Hugging Face token like to

$env:HF_TOKEN = "your-token-here"

User Persisted

Persist across sessions but only for the current user.

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("MyVariable", "MyValue", "User")

"User" ensures it applies only to the current user.

System-Wide

Persist across sessions and apply to all users on the system.

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("MyVariable", "MyValue", "Machine")

"Machine" ensures it applies system-wide. Administrative privileges needed to set system-wide variables.

Check if a variable is set

To check if the variable is set, use:

Get-ChildItem Env:MyVariable

Or simply:

$env:MyVariable

Print all environment variables

To print all currently available environment variables

Get-ChildItem Env: