> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://e2b.manicule.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
> For every page in one file, fetch https://e2b.manicule.dev/llms-full.txt (large).
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# User and workdir (/docs/template/user-and-workdir)

<!-- agent-signals: reading_time_min: 1 · est_tokens: 509 · updated: 2026-07-30 -->
Related: [Quickstart](/docs/template/quickstart.md), [How it works](/docs/template/how-it-works.md), [Caching](/docs/template/caching.md), [Base image](/docs/template/base-image.md), [Private registries](/docs/template/private-registries.md), [Defining template](/docs/template/defining-template.md)

> Default user and working directory in the sandbox and template

The default user in the template is `user` with the `/home/user` (home directory) as the working directory.
This is different from the Docker defaults, where the default user is `root` with `/` as the working directory. This is to help with tools installation, and to improve default security.

The last set user and workdir in the template is then persisted as a default to the sandbox execution.
Example of setting user and workdir in the template definition are below.

<Info>Requires the E2B SDK version at least 2.3.0</Info>

## Default user and workdir in sandbox

<CodeGroup>
```typescript title="JavaScript & TypeScript"
const sbx = await Sandbox.create()
await sbx.commands.run("whoami") // user
await sbx.commands.run("pwd") // /home/user
```

```python title="Python"
sbx = Sandbox.create()
sbx.commands.run("whoami")  # user
sbx.commands.run("pwd")  # /home/user
```
</CodeGroup>

## Custom user and workdir template

<CodeGroup>
```typescript title="JavaScript & TypeScript"
// template.ts
const template = Template()
  .fromBaseImage()
  .runCmd("whoami") // user
  .runCmd("pwd") // /home/user
  .setUser("guest")
  .runCmd("whoami") // guest
  .runCmd("pwd") // /home/guest


// build_dev.ts
await Template.build(template, 'custom-user-template', {
  onBuildLogs: defaultBuildLogger()
})


// index.ts
const sbx = await Sandbox.create("custom-user-template")
await sbx.commands.run("whoami") // guest
await sbx.commands.run("pwd") // /home/guest
```

```python title="Python"
# template.py
template = (
    Template()
    .from_base_image()
    .run_cmd("whoami") # user
    .run_cmd("pwd") # /home/user
    .set_user("guest")
    .run_cmd("whoami") # guest
    .run_cmd("pwd") # /home/guest
)


# build_dev.py
Template.build(template, 'custom-user-template',
    on_build_logs=default_build_logger()
)


# main.py
sbx = Sandbox.create("custom-user-template")
sbx.commands.run("whoami")  # guest
sbx.commands.run("pwd")  # /home/guest
```
</CodeGroup>