How can I ignore .env files in Git so they are not pushed to GitHub?

[Prateek434]

Select Topic Area

Question

Body

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a project that uses a .env file to store environment variables like API keys and database passwords. I accidentally committed it once and realized it shouldn’t be uploaded to GitHub.

What is the correct way to ignore .env files so they are not tracked or pushed to the repository?

Also, if the .env file was already committed before, how can I remove it from Git while keeping it locally?

Thanks!

[cybergeek-007]

To prevent .env files from being pushed to GitHub, you should add them to your .gitignore file.

1. Add .env to .gitignore

Open or create a .gitignore file in your project root and add:

.env

This tells Git to ignore the .env file.

2. If .env was already committed

If the file was already committed, Git will keep tracking it even if it’s in .gitignore. You need to remove it from the repository cache.

Run:

git rm --cached .env

Then commit the change:

git commit -m "Remove .env from tracking"
git push

This removes the file from Git but keeps it on your local machine.

3. Optional: Use .env.example

A good practice is to create a template file:

.env.example

This contains the variable names without secrets, so others know what environment variables they need.

Example:

API_KEY=
DATABASE_URL=

✅ After doing this, your .env file will stay local and won’t be uploaded to GitHub.

[tspascoal]

Solid answer from @Prateek434 I would only add a note, if the committed .env had sensitive data like secrets or credentials you should also consider it compromised and rotate them.

You can scrub them from your history and ask support to clean up the caches. This is documented in the docs Removing sensitive data from a repository

Look carefully at the side effects before proceeding.