privateGPT/fern/docs/pages/manual/settings.mdx

# Settings and profiles for your private GPT

The configuration of your private GPT server is done thanks to `settings` files (more precisely `settings.yaml`).
These text files are written using the [YAML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML) syntax.

While privateGPT is distributing safe and universal configuration files, you might want to quickly customize your
privateGPT, and this can be done using the `settings` files.

This project is defining the concept of **profiles** (or configuration profiles).
This mechanism, using your environment variables, is giving you the ability to easily switch between
configuration you've made.

A typical use case of profile is to easily switch between LLM and embeddings.
To be a bit more precise, you can change the language (to French, Spanish, Italian, English, etc) by simply changing
the profile you've selected; no code changes required!

PrivateGPT is configured through *profiles* that are defined using yaml files, and selected through env variables.
The full list of properties configurable can be found in `settings.yaml`.

## How to know which profiles exist
Given that a profile `foo_bar` points to the file `settings-foo_bar.yaml` and vice-versa, you simply have to look
at the files starting with `settings` and ending in `.yaml`.

## How to use an existing profiles
**Please note that the syntax to set the value of an environment variables depends on your OS**.
You have to set environment variable `PGPT_PROFILES` to the name of the profile you want to use.

For example, on **linux and macOS**, this gives:
```bash
export PGPT_PROFILES=my_profile_name_here
```

Windows Powershell(s) have a different syntax, one of them being:
```shell
set PGPT_PROFILES=my_profile_name_here
```
If the above is not working, you might want to try other ways to set an env variable in your window's terminal.

---

Once you've set this environment variable to the desired profile, you can simply launch your privateGPT,
and it will run using your profile on top of the default configuration.

## Reference
Additional details on the profiles are described in this section

### Environment variable `PGPT_SETTINGS_FOLDER`

The location of the settings folder. Defaults to the root of the project.
Should contain the default `settings.yaml` and any other `settings-{profile}.yaml`.

### Environment variable `PGPT_PROFILES`

By default, the profile definition in `settings.yaml` is loaded.
Using this env var you can load additional profiles; format is a comma separated list of profile names.
This will merge `settings-{profile}.yaml` on top of the base settings file.

For example:
`PGPT_PROFILES=local,cuda` will load `settings-local.yaml`
and `settings-cuda.yaml`, their contents will be merged with
later profiles properties overriding values of earlier ones like `settings.yaml`.

During testing, the `test` profile will be active along with the default, therefore `settings-test.yaml`
file is required.

### Environment variables expansion

Configuration files can contain environment variables,
they will be expanded at runtime.

Expansion must follow the pattern `${VARIABLE_NAME:default_value}`.

For example, the following configuration will use the value of the `PORT`
environment variable or `8001` if it's not set.
Missing variables with no default will produce an error.

```yaml
server:
  port: ${PORT:8001}
```