Environment Variables

Environment variables can be used to supply any Butler Sheet Icons (BSI) command-line parameter. This helps keep secrets out of commands/scripts, enables reusable setups, and (significantly!) shortens long commands.

Naming pattern

Each CLI parameter has a matching environment variable using this pattern:

BSI_<COMMAND>_<SUBCOMMAND_ABBREVIATION>_<PARAMETER_NAME>

Commands are:

• QSEOW — Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows (client-managed)
• QSCLOUD — Qlik Sense Cloud
• BROWSER — Embedded browser management options

Subcommand abbreviations:

Used for commands	Subcommand name	Abbreviation
qseow, qscloud	create-sheet-thumbnails	CST
qscloud	remove-sheet-icons	RSI
qscloud	list-collections	LC
browser	list-installed	LI
browser	list-available	LA
browser	install	I
browser	uninstall	UI
browser	uninstall-all	UIA

Finally, take the command-line parameter name, convert it to uppercase, and append it. Example: --host becomes _HOST, --apiuserdir becomes _API_USER_DIR.

Environment variables are also listed when running BSI with --help (scroll right to see the variable names):

Usage: butler-sheet-icons qscloud create-sheet-thumbnails|create-sheet-icons [options]

Create thumbnail images based on the layout of each sheet in Qlik Sense Cloud applications.
Multiple apps can be updated with a single command, using a Qlik Sense collection to identify which apps will be updated.

Options:
  --loglevel, --log-level <level>     Log level (choices: "error", "warn", "info", "verbose", "debug", "silly", default: "info", env: BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_LOG_LEVEL)
  --schemaversion <version>           Qlik Sense engine schema version (choices: "12.170.2", "12.612.0", "12.936.0", "12.1306.0", "12.1477.0", "12.1657.0", "12.1823.0", "12.2015.0", default: "12.612.0", env: BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_SCHEMAVERSION)
  --tenanturl <url>                   URL or host of Qlik Sense cloud tenant. Example: "https://tenant.eu.qlikcloud.com" or "tenant.eu.qlikcloud.com" (env: BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_TENANTURL)
  --apikey <key>                      API key used to access the Sense APIs (env: BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_APIKEY)
  --skip-login                        Skip QS login page, go directly to the tenant URL. Use this if you are automatically logged in to Qlik Sense (default: false, env: BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_SKIP_LOGIN)
  ...
  ...

Examples

QSEoW

PowerShell

# Set environment variables for QSEoW
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_HOST = 'qlikserver.example.com'
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_APP_ID = '12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012'
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_API_USER_DIR = 'INTERNAL'
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_API_USER_ID = 'sa_api'
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_LOGON_USER_DIR = 'INTERNAL'
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_LOGON_USER_ID = 'userID'
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_LOGON_PWD = 'password'
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_PREFIX = 'form'
$env:BSI_QSEOW_CST_CONTENT_LIBRARY = 'Butler sheet thumbnails'

# Minimal command once variables are set
butler-sheet-icons qseow create-sheet-thumbnails

Bash

# Set environment variables for QSEoW
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_HOST='qlikserver.example.com'
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_APP_ID='12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012'
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_API_USER_DIR='INTERNAL'
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_API_USER_ID='sa_api'
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_LOGON_USER_DIR='INTERNAL'
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_LOGON_USER_ID='userID'
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_LOGON_PWD='password'
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_PREFIX='form'
export BSI_QSEOW_CST_CONTENT_LIBRARY='Butler sheet thumbnails'

# Minimal command once variables are set
butler-sheet-icons qseow create-sheet-thumbnails

QS Cloud

PowerShell

# Set environment variables for QS Cloud
$env:BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_TENANTURL = 'tenant.eu.qlikcloud.com'
$env:BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_APIKEY = 'eyJhbGciOiJFUzM4NCIsImtpZCI6IjM...'
$env:BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_LOGON_USER_ID = '[email protected]'
$env:BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_LOGON_PWD = 'password'
$env:BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_APP_ID = '12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012'

# Minimal command once variables are set
butler-sheet-icons qscloud create-sheet-thumbnails

Bash

# Set environment variables for QS Cloud
export BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_TENANTURL='tenant.eu.qlikcloud.com'
export BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_APIKEY='eyJhbGciOiJFUzM4NCIsImtpZCI6IjM...'
export BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_LOGON_USER_ID='[email protected]'
export BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_LOGON_PWD='password'
export BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_APP_ID='12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012'

# Minimal command once variables are set
butler-sheet-icons qscloud create-sheet-thumbnails

Behavior and security

• With environment variables set, you can run BSI with minimal parameters.
• Command-line parameters override environment variables if both are provided.
• On shared systems, avoid system-wide secrets in env vars; consider a proper secrets manager in production.

Output and interaction

These do not configure a command — they control how Butler Sheet Icons presents itself.

Variable	Effect
NO_COLOR (any value)	Never colour the log output, even in a terminal
FORCE_COLOR=1	Always colour it, even when redirecting to a file
FORCE_COLOR=0	Never colour it — the same as NO_COLOR
BSI_NO_INTERACTIVE=1	Refuse to prompt, even in a terminal. See Interactive Mode
BSI_ASCII_ONLY=1	Use plain ASCII instead of Unicode symbols in interactive mode

Colour codes in captured logs

Requires BSI 4.1.0 or later

In earlier versions, colour instructions were written whether or not the output was going to a screen.

Butler Sheet Icons colours its log output so that info, warn and error lines are easy to tell apart. Until 4.1.0 it did that always — so if you redirected output to a file, piped it into another tool, or let a scheduler capture it, the colour instructions were captured too:

2026-06-24T10:30:45.123Z ←[32minfo←[39m: App version: 4.0.0

instead of:

2026-06-24T10:30:45.123Z info: App version: 4.0.0

From 4.1.0 the check is automatic: colour goes to a terminal, and nothing else. Interactive sessions are unchanged; redirected output, pipes, docker logs and scheduler transcripts are now clean.

This is not only cosmetic. Colour codes in a captured log break things that read it afterwards: a search for info: does not match ←[32minfo←[39m:, and log shippers that parse a level field — Splunk, Elastic, Grafana Loki — see unexpected characters in it.

If you were stripping these characters yourself with a sed filter, a PowerShell replace, or a log-shipper rule, that workaround is no longer needed. Leaving it in place does no harm.

Use FORCE_COLOR=1 if you deliberately want a coloured transcript — for example when capturing output with a tool that renders colour back to you later.

PowerShell

$env:FORCE_COLOR = "1"
butler-sheet-icons.exe browser list-installed > coloured.log

Bash

FORCE_COLOR=1 butler-sheet-icons browser list-installed > coloured.log

A terminal reporting itself as TERM=dumb is also treated as unable to show colour.

Related: Proxy environment variables

When behind a proxy, set standard proxy variables (Linux/macOS example):

export http_proxy='http://username:[email protected]:port'
export https_proxy='http://username:[email protected]:port'

These are honored when BSI downloads a browser or otherwise needs outbound network access.