direnv is a great tool for loading environment variables on a per-project basis.

The one catch is that it loads .envrc files by default and not .env. I found their instructions on how to load an .env a little unclear for a new developer like myself so below I'll show what to do.

I'm assuming:

• you've installed direnv
• you're on a mac or linux machine (sorry, Windows)

create a config

First, create a config directory for direnv

mkdir ~/.config/direnv

Then create a config file

touch ~/.config/direnv/direnv.toml

configure

Open the config, and add

[global]
load_dotenv = true

Save, and restart your shell

exec $SHELL

That's it!

Now, when you go to a project with a .env file, you can simply run

direnv allow

It will load the .env instead of just looking for .envrc

I hope this helps someone else!