Skip to main content

Environment variables

Available from v2.1.2.

Remotion supports environment variables being passed directly from the CLI, using a .env file and from the renderMedia() function.

Passing variables from the CLI​

If you want to pass an environment variable from the CLI, you need to prefix it with REMOTION_. This is a security feature to prevent your whole environment (which could contain sensitive information) being included in a Webpack bundle.

You can pass environment variables in development mode and while rendering. For example:

bash
REMOTION_MY_VAR=hello_world npm start
bash
REMOTION_MY_VAR=hello_world npm start

In your project, you can access the variable using process.env.REMOTION_MY_VAR.

Using a dotenv file​

Dotenv support is built in if you use the CLI.

Place a .env file in the root of your project and fill it with key-value pairs.

.env
ini
MY_VAR=hello
ANOTHER_VAR=world
.env
ini
MY_VAR=hello
ANOTHER_VAR=world

In your Remotion project you can read process.env to get an object of environment variables: {"MY_VAR": "hello", "ANOTHER_VAR": "world"}.

You can override the location of your dotenv file using the configuration file setting or the CLI flag.

Using in Node.js APIs​

When using the Node.js APIs such as renderMedia() or renderMediaOnLambda(), the environment variables are not picked up automatically.

The reason is that one might integrate Remotion as a small part of a big application and if Remotion would read the .env file and pick up all secrets and forwards it to renders, it would lead to a security issue.

To pass environment variables while server-side-rendering, pass an object to the envVariables option of renderMedia().

If you want to read the environment variables from a .env file, use the dotenv package.

See also​