How can I find my User ID (UID) from terminal?

Question

The title says it all. What command I need to run from a terminal to find my user ID (UID)?

score 445 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 05 '22 at 17:17

445

There are a couple of ways:

Using the id command you can get the real and effective user and group IDs.
```
 id -u <username>
```
If no username is supplied to id, it will default to the current user.
Using the shell variable. (It is not an environment variable, and thus is not available in env).
```
 echo $UID
```

edited Jan 05 '22 at 17:17

guntbert

answered May 17 '14 at 13:21

jobin

9

How about GID ? – kangear Oct 29 '15 at 01:11
26

@kangear id -g – itsazzad Dec 18 '15 at 15:23
It's worth noting that, due to the fact that the variables are resolved before being passed to a command, we have that `sudo echo ${UID}` prints out `1000` (or whatever your sudoer user's UID is), whereas `sudo id -u` prints out `0`. – adentinger Dec 19 '18 at 20:33
The `username` is optional, defaulting to yourself. Maybe square brackets would be better for indicating this, instead of angle brackets. – mwfearnley May 13 '19 at 15:44
2

The second part of this answer is **wrong**. The variable in question is explicitly _not_ an environment variable. It's a shell variable. Big difference. You can see this with `echo $UID` versus `env|grep ^UID` in Bash, for example. This means in particular that the first method is more robust and the second will only work in shell scripts, not - say - in something like Python (`python -c 'import os; print(os.environ)'` to see the *environment*). – 0xC0000022L Dec 16 '20 at 15:39

score 105 · Answer 2 · answered May 17 '14 at 13:20

105

Simply try

id

This will return your user ID, group ID, and all your groups.

answered May 17 '14 at 13:20

TAq

15

or `id -u` to see just the UID – steeldriver May 17 '14 at 13:21
Yepp. Prefer Jobin's answer, if you need to avoid parsing the output. – TAq May 17 '14 at 13:25
5

so much easier with `id -u` and `id -g`. Thanks. :) – thoroc Aug 03 '17 at 17:00

score 17 · Answer 3 · answered May 17 '14 at 13:28

17

Try also :

getent passwd username

This will display user id , group id and home directory .

Or:

grep username /etc/passwd

answered May 17 '14 at 13:28

nux

why to try long or alternative command while `echo $UID` and `id -u` is simple and exact **according to question**? – Pandya May 17 '14 at 13:37
7

thats right , but its good to know all options – nux May 17 '14 at 13:38

score 10 · Answer 4 · answered May 17 '14 at 13:23

10

You can use id command.

answered May 17 '14 at 13:23

Diego Lopez

Gabriel Staples · Answer 5 · 2023-06-18T02:47:11.830

2

id -u  # user ID (UID)
id -g  # group ID (GID)

Example run and output:

$ id -u
1000
$ id -g
1000

and:

$ sudo id -u
[sudo] password for gabriel: 
0
$ sudo id -g
0

Note that the first user is generally 1000 for both the UID and GID, and the root user is generally 0 for both the UID and GID.

edited Jun 18 '23 at 02:47

answered Jun 15 '23 at 05:53

Gabriel Staples

5 Answers5