Starting from Node.js v20.6.0 you can read dot env files into the process.env object using the --env-file=path nodejs option.

If you're using NestJS's CLI (@nestjs/cli package) you can turn on that Node.js option in two ways:

1. nest start --exec "node --env-file=.env"
2. For NestJS v11 or above: nest start --env-file .env