How to fix "No application encryption key has been specified" in Laravel

Here's what it should look like in your application's .env file:

APP_KEY=[somekey]

If this is missing for any reason, you'll see a MissingAppKeyException exception thrown, with the message "No application encryption key has been specified.".

How to set an app key in Laravel¶

If your APP_KEY has not been set for any reason during installing Laravel, all you need to do is run this command within your project:

php artisan key:generate

You'll always want to do this rather than set the APP_KEY manually yourself, as this command takes into account the cipher configured within your application, and will always generate a secure key.