Nuxt Tip: Use Environment-Specific Configurations

It sometimes happens that you need to have different configurations for different environments in your Nuxt.js application. In this article, I'll show you how to use environment-specific Nuxt configurations.

Let's start with a simple nuxt.config.ts file:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  app: {
    head: {
      title: 'My App'
    }
  }
})

For demonstration purposes, let's assume that we want to have a different title in development and production. You might be tempted to use an environment variable like this:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  app: {
    head: {
      title: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development' ? 'My App (Dev)' : 'My App'
    }
  }
})

This approach is not recommended by Nuxt, instead, you should use the fully typed, per-environment overrides like $production, $development or $test in your nuxt.config file. Here's how you can do it:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  app: {
    head: {
      title: 'My App'
    }
  },
  $development: {
    app: {
      head: {
        title: 'My App (Dev)'
      }
    }
  }
})

The $development key is a special key that allows you to define a Nuxt configuration for the development environment. This configuration is merged with the default configuration when running in development mode. This mechanism is powered by c12, a smart configuration loader available in the UnJS ecosystem.