Hello everyone! Problem I’m experiencing an issue with accessing environment variables in my self-hosted n8n setup. Expressions like {{$env["TEST"]}}, return null, and $env itself returns an empty object {}. This used to work before (as referenced in this previous discussion: How to define custom …

Hey @sasha hope all is good. Welcome to the community. $env most certainly does work for me. See both syntaxes: [image] [image] if you would like to expand on what you are trying to captures and how you are setting you variable, please add more details. UPD: Also check if N8N_BLOCK_ENV_ACCESS…

Pretty sure this can be disabled. Or it might be by default now. So make sure to check your ENV variables to see if that isn’t the case. :slight_smile:

Good point, I’ve updated the answer to indicate the variable and the doc about it.

Thank you for your help! I’ve set N8N_BLOCK_ENV_ACCESS_IN_NODE to false, but unfortunately that hasn’t resolved the issue yet. I’ll continue experimenting and will post back with the results.

Loop us in, we can try to help along the way. How do you set your env?

I’m also experiencing the same - I’m using Render to host the instance (free plan), and adding the N8N_BLOCK_ENV_ACCESS_IN_NODE env var doesn’t seem to work for me. Not sure if it’s a Render-specific thing, but when I go to generate the render.yaml file, it shows: # Exported from Render on 2025-11…

{{ process.env }} also return all Env. vars: related post: [image] Reading credentials from .env file Questions Hello @WesleyWai From my attempts, $env always appears empty unless you reference a specific variable like {{ $env.N8N_HOST }}, Even if it sh…

Interesting.. so even if it does show undefined, the value is still there? I tried using process.env as well, but it still seems like it’s not being exposed. As an example, when I’m setting up my Google Sheets credentials, the payload comes up empty for the secret from the OAuth callback: [image…

Ok, it turns out it is a Render specific thing - the Secrets section in Render are used only during build time, and if it’s needed during runtime I’d need to have my own Docker build image vs pulling directly from the official n8n docker image. [image] Docker connot mount secrets Ne…

Environment variables not accessible in self-hosted setup - $env returns empty object

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mohamed3nan November 5, 2025, 9:20am 8

{{ process.env }} also return all Env. vars:

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Environment variables not accessible in self-hosted setup - $env returns empty object

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