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Configure Settings Using a Configuration File

On this page

  • Configuration File Format
  • Configuration File Location
  • Configurable Settings
  • Behavior with config API

You can specify mongosh settings in a global configuration file. When you specify settings in a configuration file, those settings are applied at startup. After you create a configuration file, the settings in the file take effect the next time you start mongosh.

The mongosh configuration file uses the YAML format. All options are under the mongosh namespace.

The following configuration file sets:

  • displayBatchSize to 50

  • inspectDepth to 20

  • redactHistory to remove-redact

mongosh:
displayBatchSize: 50
inspectDepth: 20
redactHistory: "remove-redact"

The file location where mongosh looks for the configuration file depends on your operating system:

Operating System
File Location
Windows
mongosh.cfg, in the same directory as the mongosh.exe binary.
macOS

mongosh looks for a configuration file in the following directories in the order they are listed:

  1. /usr/local/etc/mongosh.conf

  2. /opt/homebrew/etc/mongosh.conf

  3. /etc/mongosh.conf

Once mongosh reads a configuration file in one of these directories, any remaining directories in the list are not checked and configuration files in those directories are ignored.

Linux
/etc/mongosh.conf

You can specify the following mongosh settings in your configuration file:

Key
Type
Default
Description
displayBatchSize
integer
20
The number of items displayed per cursor iteration
enableTelemetry
boolean
true
Enables sending anonymized tracking and diagnostic data to MongoDB.
editor
string
null
Designates an editor to use within the mongosh console. Overrides the EDITOR environment variable if set.
forceDisableTelemetry
boolean
false
Only available in the global configuration file. When true, users cannot enable telemetry manually.
historyLength
integer
1000
The number of items to store in mongosh REPL's history file.
inspectCompact
integer or boolean
3

The level of inner elements that mongosh outputs on a single line. Short array elements are also grouped together on a single line.

If set to false, mongosh outputs each field on its own line.

inspectDepth
integer or Infinity
6
The depth to which objects are printed. Setting inspectDepth to Infinity (the javascript object) prints all nested objects to their full depth.
redactHistory
string
remove

Controls what information is recorded in the shell history. Must be one of:

  • keep: Retain all history.

  • remove: Remove lines which contain sensitive information.

  • remove-redact: Redact sensitive information.

showStackTraces
boolean
false
Controls display of a stack trace along with error messages.
snippetAutoload
boolean
true
If true, automatically load installed snippets at startup.
snippetIndexSourceURLs
string
MongoDB Repository
A semicolon-separated list of URLs that link to a snippet registry.
snippetRegistryURL
string
The npm registry used by the mongosh npm client that installs snippet.

Settings specified with the config API:

  • Override settings specified in the configuration file.

  • Persist across restarts.

Example

Consider the following configuration file that sets the inspectDepth setting to 20:

mongosh:
inspectDepth: 20

During your mongosh session you run the following command to set inspectDepth to 10:

config.set( "inspectDepth", 10 )

The value of inspectDepth becomes 10, and will remain 10 even when mongosh is restarted.

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