Environment Variables
The following environment variables are ones that you can set to change the behavior of Nx in different environments.
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| NX_ADD_PLUGINS | boolean | If set to false, Nx will not add plugins to infer tasks. This is true by default. Workspaces created before Nx 18 will have this disabled via a migration for backwards compatibility |
| NX_BASE | string | The default base branch to use when calculating the affected projects. Can be overridden on the command line with --base. |
| NX_CACHE_DIRECTORY | string | The cache for task outputs is stored in .nx/cache by default. Set this variable to use a different directory. |
| NX_CACHE_PROJECT_GRAPH | boolean | If set to false, disables the project graph cache. Most useful when developing a plugin that modifies the project graph. |
| NX_DAEMON | boolean | If set to false, disables the Nx daemon process. Disable the daemon to print console.log statements in plugin code you are developing. |
| NX_DEFAULT_PROJECT | string | The default project used for commands which require a project. e.g. nx build, nx g component, etc. |
| NX_HEAD | string | The default head branch to use when calculating the affected projects. Can be overridden on the command line with --head. |
| NX_PERF_LOGGING | boolean | If set to true, will print debug information useful for for profiling executors and Nx itself |
| NX_PROFILE | string | Prepend NX_PROFILE=profile.json before running targets with Nx to generate a file that be loaded in Chrome dev tools to visualize the performance of Nx across multiple processes. |
| NX_WORKSPACE_DATA_CACHE_DIRECTORY | string | The project graph cache and some other internal nx caches are stored in .nx/workspace-data by default. Set this variable to use a different directory. |
| NX_PROJECT_GRAPH_MAX_WORKERS | number | The number of workers to use when calculating the project graph. |
| NX_PARALLEL | number | The number of tasks Nx should run in parallel. Overrides any configured value inside nx.json |
| NX_RUNNER | string | The name of task runner from the config to use. Can be overridden on the command line with --runner. Not read if NX_TASKS_RUNNER is set. |
| NX_SKIP_NX_CACHE | boolean | Rerun the tasks even when the results are available in the cache |
| NX_TASKS_RUNNER | string | The name of task runner from the config to use. Can be overridden on the command line with --runner. Preferred over NX_RUNNER. |
| NX_TASKS_RUNNER_DYNAMIC_OUTPUT | boolean | If set to false, will use non-dynamic terminal output strategy (what you see in CI), even when you terminal can support the dynamic version |
| NX_VERBOSE_LOGGING | boolean | If set to true, will print debug information useful for troubleshooting |
| NX_DRY_RUN | boolean | If set to true, will perform a dry run of the generator. No files will be created and no packages will be installed. |
| NX_INTERACTIVE | boolean | If set to true, will allow Nx to prompt you in the terminal to answer some further questions when running generators. |
| NX_GENERATE_QUIET | boolean | If set to true, will prevent Nx logging file operations during generate |
| NX_PREFER_TS_NODE | boolean | If set to true, Nx will use ts-node for local execution of plugins even if @swc-node/register is installed. |
| NX_IGNORE_CYCLES | boolean | If set to true, Nx will ignore errors created by a task graph circular dependency. Can be overriden on the command line with --nxIgnoreCycles |
| NX_BATCH_MODE | boolean | If set to true, Nx will run task(s) in batches for executors which support batches. |
| NX_SKIP_LOG_GROUPING | boolean | If set to true, Nx will not group command's logs on CI. |
| NX_MIGRATE_CLI_VERSION | string | The version of Nx to use for running the nx migrate command. If not set, it defaults to latest. |
| NX_LOAD_DOT_ENV_FILES | boolean | If set to 'false', Nx will not load any environment files (e.g. .local.env, .env.local) |
| NX_NATIVE_FILE_CACHE_DIRECTORY | string | The cache for native .node files is stored under a global temp directory by default. Set this variable to use a different directory. This is interpreted as an absolute path. |
| NX_PLUGIN_NO_TIMEOUTS | boolean | If set to true, plugin operations will not timeout |
| NX_SOCKET_DIRECTORY | string | Sets the directory that Nx will use when creating sockets to communicate with child processes. May be needed if the derived socket path is too long. |
Nx will set the following environment variables so they can be accessible within the process even outside of executors and generators.
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| NX_TASK_TARGET_PROJECT | string | Set to the project name of the task being run. Use this to tell which project is being run. |
| NX_TASK_TARGET_TARGET | string | Set to the target name of the task being run. Use this to tell which target of the project is being run. |
| NX_TASK_TARGET_CONFIGURATION | string | Set to the configuration name of the task being run. Use this to tell which configuration of the target is being run. |
| NX_DRY_RUN | boolean | Set to true during dry runs of generators. Use this to avoid side effects during generators. |
| NX_INTERACTIVE | boolean | Set to false when running generators with --interactive=false. Use this to prevent prompting during generators |
Nx Cloud Environment Variables are listed on a dedicated page.