Environment Variables

Environment Variables offers an easy and convenient way to manage environment variables. It allows you to create profiles for managing a set of variables together. Profile variables have precedence over User and System variables. Applying the profile adds variables to User environment variables in the background. When a profile is applied, if there is an existing User variable with the same name, a backup variable is created in User variables which will be reverted to the original value on profile un-apply. Applied variables list shows the current state of the environment, respecting the order of evaluation of environment variables (Profile > User > System). Evaluated Path variable value is shown at the top of the list.

PowerToys Environment Variables screenshot

Edit/Remove variable

To edit or remove a variable (profile, User or System), select the more button (•••) on the desired variable:

PowerToys Environment Variables: Edit/Remove variable

Add profile

To add a new profile:

  • Select New profile
  • Enter profile name
  • Set Enabled toggle to On to apply the profile right after creation
  • Select Add variable to add variables to profile (either new variable or existing User/System variables)
  • Select Save

PowerToys Environment Variables: Add profile

To edit or remove a profile, select the more button (•••) on the desired profile.

Apply profile

To apply a profile, set the profile toggle to On. Only one profile can be applied at a time. The Applied variables list will show applied profile variables at the top (below Path variable):

PowerToys Environment Variables: Apply profile

Settings

From the settings, the following options can be configured:

Setting Description
Open as administrator Allow management of System variables. If off, only profile and User variables can be modified. Environment Variables is opened as administrator by default.

Install PowerToys

This utility is part of the Microsoft PowerToys utilities for power users. It provides a set of useful utilities to tune and streamline your Windows experience for greater productivity. To install PowerToys, see Installing PowerToys.