Environment Variables

Environment variables configure server-level behavior. Most users don’t need to change these — the Docker image sets sensible defaults.

Reference

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	3000	Server port
NODE_ENV	(unset)	Environment mode. Set to production in Docker; any other value (including unset) runs in development mode.
CORS_ORIGIN	http://localhost:5173	Allowed CORS origin for the frontend. Only needed in development or split-origin deployments.
CONFIG_PATH	./config	Directory for the database, settings, and other config files.
DATABASE_URL	./config/narratorr.db	libSQL/SQLite database path. The file: prefix is optional and is stripped if present.
AUTH_BYPASS	false	Disable authentication entirely. Development/recovery only — never use in production.
URL_BASE	/	Subpath for reverse proxy deployments (e.g., /narratorr). All routes and assets are served under this prefix.
TRUSTED_PROXIES	(unset)	Comma-separated reverse-proxy IPs/CIDRs (e.g. 10.0.0.0/8,192.168.0.0/16) so the real client IP is read from X-Forwarded-For. Set this when running behind a reverse proxy — required for forms-auth Secure cookies and the local-network bypass to work correctly. See the Security docs.
LOG_LEVEL	info	Initial log verbosity at boot: fatal, error, warn, info, debug, trace, silent. The General settings log level overrides this once the server is running.
MONITOR_INTERVAL_CRON	*/30 * * * * *	Download-monitor poll cadence as a cron expression. Advanced — rarely changed.
NARRATORR_SECRET_KEY	(auto-generated)	32-byte hex string used to encrypt credentials at rest (AES-256-GCM). If not set, a key is auto-generated and saved to CONFIG_PATH/secret.key on first run. Set this explicitly if you want the same key across container rebuilds without persisting the config volume.
AUDIBLE_REGION	us	Fallback region for metadata lookups when not configured in Settings > General. Values: us, ca, uk, au, fr, de, jp, it, in, es.

Docker Overrides

The Docker image and docker-compose.yml set these automatically:

NODE_ENV=production
CONFIG_PATH=/config
DATABASE_URL=file:/config/narratorr.db

You generally don’t need to override these unless you have a custom volume layout.

The library root is not set via an environment variable — it’s a Settings value (Settings > General > Library). The container conventionally mounts your library at /audiobooks, and you point Settings at that path.

Timezone

You can pass TZ to the Docker container for timezone-aware log timestamps:

environment:
  - TZ=America/New_York

The app does not read TZ directly — it’s handled by the Node.js runtime and OS. This affects how timestamps appear in logs, not application behavior.

Overriding in Docker Compose

Add variables to the environment section:

services:
  narratorr:
    image: narratorr/narratorr:latest
    environment:
      - PORT=8080
      - AUDIBLE_REGION=uk
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - /data/audiobooks:/audiobooks

PUID and PGID set the UID/GID the container runs as (linuxserver.io base image convention, default 911). Set them to your host user’s IDs for correct file ownership on the mounted /config and /audiobooks volumes.