# Manage your project's environments

Learn more about creating, switching and deleting environments, as well as promoting an environment to master.

Environments allow you to safely work on isolated instances of your project. They help you make changes to you schema and test new content structures without breaking your production systems.

![Manage environments](https://hygraph.com/images/docs/user-guides/project-guides/projectsettings-manage-environments.png)

## Create an environment

To create a new environment, we'll use the environment cloning flow:

![Create an environment](https://hygraph.com/images/docs/user-guides/project-guides/projectsettings-create-environments.png)

1. Navigate to the **Project Settings** tab in the left-hand sidebar of your Hygraph project.
2. Select **Environments** under general settings.
3. Click on the `Clone` button of the Master Environment card.
4. Fill in the form:
   - `Display name`: Provide a display name for your environment. This is the name that will be displayed in Hygraph.
   - `Endpoint alias`: This is created automatically as you type in your display name, but can be edited if you wish to. Your endpoint alias is the identifier used in the URLs of the webapp.
   - `Description`: This is where you can add a description for your new environment.
   - `Clone with context`: Checkbox that allows you to select whether you'd like to include the content from the master environment.
   - `Webhooks`: Checkbox that allows you to select whether you'd like to clone the project's webhooks. They will be disabled initially.

**Important:**
Users, Roles & Permissions, Permanent Auth Tokens, and billing will not be cloned between projects.

### Asset URLs change

Asset URLs will be different after a clone. Make sure to check for asset URLs stored in other places, such as source code or external systems.

Please note that, while in the past every single handle would have been updated, with the new asset system only the base URL changes on cloned environments.

**Old URL change behavior:**

Original asset URL:

`https://media.graphassets.com/6gB5FZ9mQiWHOu6Lt95p`

Asset URL after cloning:

`https://media.graphassets.com/<random new handle>`

With the new **Hygraph Asset Management System**, the following asset URL:

```
https://eu-west-2.graphassets.com/cm1q9b9c401cv07ut4wcgf2uj/cm2kmqsf6002a07ukg3z7sjzg
```

Would turn into something like this:

```
https://eu-west-2.graphassets.com/<new asset env id>/cm2kmqsf6002a07ukg3z7sjzg
```

Since the asset ID remains the same, you can simply run a search for the old asset environment ID and replace it with the new one.

## Switch environments

You must have at least two environments to be able to switch. To switch environments, click the **switch** dropdown in your Hygraph top bar. Select the environment that you want to switch to.

![Switch environments](https://hygraph.com/images/docs/user-guides/project-guides/projectsettings-switch-environments.png)

## Promote environments to master

You must have at least two environments to be able to do this. To promote an environment to master, simply click on the `Promote to master` link in the environment card.

![Promote environment to master](https://hygraph.com/images/docs/user-guides/project-guides/projectsettings-promote-env-to-master.png)

You will be prompted to provide a `New display name` and a `New API ID` for the current master environment being replaced. Fill in this information then click on `Promote to master`.

## Delete environments

You must have at least two environments to be able to do this. To delete an environment, simply click on the `Delete` link in the environment card. A warning will display to make sure you did not click on the link by mistake, so you need to confirm your choice by clicking on the `Delete environment` button to finalize the process.

![Delete environment](https://hygraph.com/images/docs/user-guides/project-guides/projectsettings-delete-environments.png)