Get the Computer Name cross-platform using Powershell

Introduction

There are a few ways to get the computer name using Powershell. One way is to use the environment variable $env:COMPUTERNAME however, this doesn’t work on a Mac.

Other options

Here are a few options to get the computer name using Powershell that work consistently on both Windows and Mac.

MachineName property of the Environment class

[Environment]::MachineName

GetHost() method

[System.Net.Dns]::GetHostName()

Using the output

Both of these options will return the computer name as a string allowing you to pass the value into a variable.

$name = [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostName()
Write-Host "Computer name is ${name}"
> Computer name is Justin-MacStudioM2.local
$name = [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostName()
Write-Host "Computer name is ${name}"
> Computer name is Justin-MacStudioM2.local