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precedence-of-dot-env-files.md

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Precedence Of Dot Env Files

Dot Env files like .env, .env.development, .env.local, etc. are one of the main ways to configure your Next.js app across various environments.

It's not uncommon to see several different .env* files in production app that is under active development.

Here is an example of almost every variant in play:

$ ls -a -1 .env*
.env
.env.development
.env.development.local
.env.development.local.example
.env.local
.env.production
.env.test

So, how does Next.js decide which files to load and in what order?

It will always attempt to load .env and .env.local (except in test) if those exist. It will also look for environment-specific files based on the NODE_ENV (which can be one of development, test, or production). So, in development, the .env.development and .env.development.local will be loaded. Something like .env.development.local.example isn't on the list, but rather is a convention for a dotenv file's template.

As for the order, the environment itself (your system's environment variables) which are present in process.env take the highest precedence. After that, it looks in any of the follow present files in this order, stopping once it finds what it is looking for:

  • .env.$(NODE_ENV).local
  • .env.local
  • .env.$(NODE_ENV)
  • .env

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