---
title: Environment Variables in Admin UI
label: Environment Variables
order: 100
desc: NEEDS TO BE WRITTEN
---

## Admin environment vars

<Banner type="warning">
  <strong>Important:</strong>
  <br />
  Be careful about what variables you provide to your client-side code. Analyze every single one to
  make sure that you're not accidentally leaking anything that an attacker could exploit. Only keys
  that are safe for anyone to read in plain text should be provided to your Admin panel.
</Banner>

By default, `env` variables are **not** provided to the Admin panel for security and safety reasons.
But, Payload provides you with a way to still provide `env` vars to your frontend code.

**Payload will automatically supply any present `env` variables that are prefixed with `PAYLOAD_PUBLIC_` directly to the Admin panel.**

For example, if you've got the following environment variable:

`PAYLOAD_PUBLIC_STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=pk_test_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX`

This key will automatically be made available to the Payload bundle and can be referenced in your Admin component code as `process.env.PAYLOAD_PUBLIC_STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY`.
