You can copy the commands below to you shell and run it. it will give you the output that you can just copy from into your .env file you are newly creating. Strapi io 4.x env variable generation # Generate keys APP_KEYS = $( openssl rand -base64 16 ) , $( openssl rand -base64 16 ) , $( openssl rand -base64 16 ) API_TOKEN_SALT = $( openssl rand -base64 16 ) ADMIN_JWT_SECRET = $( openssl rand -base64 16 ) TRANSFER_TOKEN_SALT = $( openssl rand -base64 16 ) # Print results echo "APP_KEYS= $APP_KEYS " echo "API_TOKEN_SALT= $API_TOKEN_SALT " echo "ADMIN_JWT_SECRET= $ADMIN_JWT_SECRET " echo "TRANSFER_TOKEN_SALT= $TRANSFER_TOKEN_SALT " unset APP_KEYS API_TOKEN_SALT ADMIN_JWT_SECRET TRANSFER_TOKEN_SALT I've posted this in the strapi github as well https://github.com/strapi/strapi/issues/15206#issuecomment-2529899024