# /etc/profiles/per-user/$USER
**URL:** https://discourse.nixos.org/t/etc-profiles-per-user-user/17004
**Category:** Help
**Created:** [January 6, 2022, 8:10am UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/etc-profiles-per-user-user/17004 "2022-01-06T08:10:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@kini](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/kini)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2022, 8:10am UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/etc-profiles-per-user-user/17004/1 "2022-01-06T08:10:15Z")
What is the significance of the directory `/etc/profiles/per-user/$USER`? It doesn’t seem to exist on my NixOS system, but it’s added to `$NIX_PROFILES` (via the NixOS option `environment.profiles`) by [the following code](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/e465dd55ecf9ce4c17ffe6210b360c6c457d08b2/nixos/modules/config/users-groups.nix#L594) from `nixos/modules/config/users-groups.nix` in nixpkgs:
```nix
environment.profiles = [
"$HOME/.nix-profile"
"/etc/profiles/per-user/$USER"
];
```
I don’t see any mention of it in the NixOS manual, nixpkgs manual, nix manual, nixpkgs source code, or nix source code (except the above snippet from the nixpkgs source code).
---
### Author:  [@nixinator](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/nixinator)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/etc-profiles-per-user-user/17004/2 "2022-01-06T14:41:33Z")
/etc/profiles/per-user/$USER get created when you configure per user packages.
```auto
isNormalUser = true;
packages = [
pkgs.coway
];
};
```
Maybe that should be documented somewhere, it’s quite automagical.
A unrelated bug to your questions that was fixed , thats also good for info/reference.
[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/107353](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/107353)