How to get Windows' special folders for currently logged-in user?

Question

How can I get Windows special folders like My Documents, Desktop, etc. from my Python script? Do I need win32 extensions?

It must work on Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

Atheistic

related: Find system folder locations in Python – Volkman

List of windows folder constants: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/knownfolderid – Benildas

Answer 1

You can do it with the pywin32 extensions:

from win32com.shell import shell, shellcon
print shell.SHGetFolderPath(0, shellcon.CSIDL_MYPICTURES, None, 0)
# prints something like C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Pictures
# (Unicode object)

Check shellcon.CSIDL_xxx for other possible folders.

I think using pywin32 is the best way. Else you'd have to use ctypes to access the SHGetFolderPath function somehow (other solutions might be possible but these are the ones I know).

Saltire

Thanks! What exactly is shell in windows and what is shellcon ? – Atheistic

@Primoz: I don't know what the abbreviations mean, but all *con modules in the pywin32 package are autogenerated from Windows header files and only contain definitions. The win32com.shell module contains functions from shell32.dll. – Saltire

The docs mention constants SHGFP_TYPE_CURRENT and SHGFP_TYPE_DEFAULT for the last parameter of SHGetFolderPath(), but these aren't defined in shellcon for some reason... I wonder why not. – Diophantus

Note that not all shellcon.CSIDL_xxx values are valid on all machines. For example on my machine CSIDL_PERSONAL (5) is valid but CSIDL_MYDOCUMENTS (12) is not. blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/06/08/… has a great powershell script for listing all of the special values on a particular machine. – Evangelineevangelism

note that My Documents is not retrievable this way. You need to use: df = shell.SHGetDesktopFolder() pidl = df.ParseDisplayName(0, None, "::{450d8fba-ad25-11d0-98a8-0800361b1103}")[1] mydocs = shell.SHGetPathFromIDList(pidl) – Dwan

Can I get reverse functionality. Like I have path as "C:\Windows\dir1\dir2\xyz.dll" and I want to get output as "csidl_windows\dir1\dir2\xyz.dll"? – Comptom

You can do prefix matching against CSIDL's that you want to check, but there's no direct way to reverse it. I also wouldn't know any use case for it. – Saltire

@AndiDog, what is the benefit of this approach over using ctypes? – Gamekeeper

ctypes isn't easy to get right. Luckily someone provided a correct (I guess) answer, but manually writing calls to lots of C functions and getting the data right can be non-trivial. No huge difference otherwise and actually ctypes usage will remove one required dependency. – Saltire

Answer 2

Should you wish to do it without the win32 extensions, you can use ctypes to call SHGetFolderPath:

>>> import ctypes.wintypes
>>> CSIDL_PERSONAL= 5       # My Documents
>>> SHGFP_TYPE_CURRENT= 0   # Want current, not default value

>>> buf= ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(ctypes.wintypes.MAX_PATH)
>>> ctypes.windll.shell32.SHGetFolderPathW(0, CSIDL_PERSONAL, 0, SHGFP_TYPE_CURRENT, buf)
0
>>> buf.value
u'C:\\Documents and Settings\\User\\My Documents'

Turtledove

Your code (also) illustrates one of the limitations of using ctypes instead of the win32 extensions, namely the fact that the former doesn't supply any of the often needed Window's constants like those defined in win32com.shellcon -- so one has to look-up their values and add each of them manually. – Acetabulum

Nice solution. And working on my Windows 8. However, the MS Doc (msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb762181%28VS.85%29.aspx) says that it's deprecated. I'm not sure what are the implications... – Keiko

THANKS A LOT. BTW constant values are here: installmate.com/support/im9/using/symbols/functions/csidls.htm – Mikkimiko

By the way, I had to do ctypes.windll.shell32.SHGetFolderPathW(0, CSIDL_PERSONAL, 0, SHGFP_TYPE_CURRENT, buf) twice. The first time I got error code -2147024890. – Petiolule

Regarding deprecated: The SHGetKnownFolderPath is much more cumbersome to use, so I would use win32com in that case. Using the answer here for now, to keep down my dependencies :). – Yellows

@thomasa88: indeed! And, as SHGetFolderPathW() is already a wrapper to SHGetKnownFolderPath() since Windows Vista, this will possibly be available in the foreseeable future, deprecated or not... – Joleen

Answer 3

import win32com.client
oShell = win32com.client.Dispatch("Wscript.Shell")
print oShell.SpecialFolders("Desktop")

Dineric

Answer 4

Try winshell (made exactly for this purpose):

import winshell

print 'Desktop =>', winshell.desktop ()
print 'Common Desktop =>', winshell.desktop (1)
print 'Application Data =>', winshell.application_data ()
print 'Common Application Data =>', winshell.application_data (1)
print 'Bookmarks =>', winshell.bookmarks ()
print 'Common Bookmarks =>', winshell.bookmarks (1)
print 'Start Menu =>', winshell.start_menu ()
print 'Common Start Menu =>', winshell.start_menu (1)
print 'Programs =>', winshell.programs ()
print 'Common Programs =>', winshell.programs (1)
print 'Startup =>', winshell.startup ()
print 'Common Startup =>', winshell.startup (1)
print 'My Documents =>', winshell.my_documents ()
print 'Recent =>', winshell.recent ()
print 'SendTo =>', winshell.sendto ()

Krona

It's just a wrapper around pywin32, and if I need pywin32, I rather used it without another layer. – Atheistic

Ridiculously simple and straightforward--and therefore beautiful. – Sugarplum

Answer 5

A little bit hacky, but without the need of a special import

import os
os.popen('echo %appdata%').read().strip()

Summerville

Why not use os.environ? – Colobus

Answer 6

https://pypi.org/project/userpaths is an alternatve for that.

# Get the user's My Documents folder
import userpaths
my_docs = userpaths.get_my_documents()

You can directly use like that.

Whereabouts