**When testing APIs, software engineers often repeat identical values across multiple requests, but who wants to waste time typing the same values every time? **

[Insomnia](https://insomnia.rest)Insomnia's environment variables solve this problem by allowing you to define a value once as an environment variable and reference that value wherever it’s needed. Insomnia also enables you to override certain variables using sub-environments or folder environments. Standard variables are base URLs, authentication tokens and resource IDs, but you can create any variables that help you save time.

Eventually, you'll run into a request that requires some form of authentication. The issue with storing passwords in plain text is that anyone can read them.

## The Solutions We Discovered Together

This issue prompted the community to question how to avoid plain-text passwords in the “Manage Environments” section of Insomnia. Thanks to a combination of [community contributions](https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/2593)community contributions and Insomnia features, you can easily avoid this situation through various options:

### 1. Use Private Environments

The easiest solution is to use private environments. A private environment will never be exported or synced. However, it will still be in plain text, so it doesn't completely solve the issue at hand, but I wanted to point out that it is available.

### 2. Use ENV Files

My preferred option would be using env files. An Insomnia plugin created by community member Edirin made this possible. Huge thanks to him for creating this [Insomnia Plugin – dotenv](https://insomnia.rest/plugins/insomnia-plugin-dotenv)Insomnia Plugin – dotenv that makes it tenfold easier to use env files in environments.

To use Edirin's creation:

1. - Open Insomnia preferences. The shortcuts are (Ctrl + ,) or (Cmd + ,) depending on your operating system.
2. - Navigate to the Plugins tab and type in "insomnia-plugin-dotenv" in the search bar.
3. - Click "Install Plugin."

The alternative, and perhaps easier, installation method is to visit the [plugin hub](https://insomnia.rest/plugins/insomnia-plugin-dotenv)plugin hub and click the "Install in Core" button on the top right.

After installing the dotenv plugin:

1. - Navigate back to the "Manage Environment" page.
2. - Create a key-value-pair where the value references the "dotenv" plugin you just installed. The process uses regular JSON, so add your key, and when typing the value, press ctrl + space (or cmd + space) and select the dotenv plugin from the autocomplete dropdown. Then, click on the tag and configure the plugin. Here is an example of what it would look like:

1. - Choose the .env file and which variable name you need to retrieve from it. The live preview below is a nice touch to ensure you see the value assigned to the variable.
2. - Click "Done," and you're good to go!

### 3. Use ENV Files With Sub Environments

[Opender](https://github.com/develohpanda)Opender took it one step further by utilizing the [Insomnia Plugin – dotenv](https://insomnia.rest/plugins/insomnia-plugin-dotenv)Insomnia Plugin – dotenv alongside sub environments.

1. - As seen in this [sample environment](https://insomnia.rest/run/?label=Example%20dotenv%20consmption&uri=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.githubusercontent.com%2Fdevelohpanda%2F5afb92631d9a23953bc22ad1ea9932bd%2Fraw%2F67561fcbb28c57434d9f303b78776fa0cb392802%2Finsomnia.json)sample environment, you'll want to map each variable against the env file in the base Insomnia environment.
2. - Specify an envFilePath variable in the three sub environments, e.g., .env.local, .env.staging and .env.production.
3. - Most importantly, when consuming the dotenv plugin, **reference the envFilePath variable instead of hard-coding it.**

This is handy for collaboration. The environment variable setup is shared (in the base environment). Still, each collaborator provides the specific keys from a file on their file-system, which is never synced or exported.

## Thank You, Insomnia Community!

The results of this collaboration to avoid plain-text passwords in Insomnia demonstrate two things:

1. - The community is incredible.
2. - Insomnia is awesome.

The combination of these two created a fantastic new plugin and excellent use case. I'd like to make one last shout out to Alex for kicking it off in the following [GitHub issue](https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/2593)GitHub issue. We're all a little better at protecting our plain-text passwords now, thanks to you.

You can explore the other 250+ Insomnia plugins available on the [Plugin Hub](https://insomnia.rest/plugins)Plugin Hub. There are tons of excellent open source plugins. If you can't find something you need, Insomnia has [documentation](https://support.insomnia.rest/article/26-plugins)documentation to help you create your own.

Check out our recent blog post for even more Insomnia tips: [Service Design Guidelines with OpenAPI and Kong](https://konghq.com/blog/service-design-guidelines-with-openapi-and-kong-part-i)Service Design Guidelines with OpenAPI and Kong