website/docs/cli/commands/apply.mdx
The tofu apply command executes the actions proposed in a OpenTofu
plan.
Usage: tofu apply [options] [plan file]
When you run tofu apply without passing a saved plan file, OpenTofu automatically creates a new execution plan as if you had run tofu plan, prompts you to approve that plan, and takes the indicated actions. You can use all of the planning modes and
planning options to customize how OpenTofu will create the plan.
You can pass the -auto-approve option to instruct OpenTofu to apply the plan without asking for confirmation.
:::danger Warning
If you use -auto-approve, we recommend making sure that no one can change your infrastructure outside of your OpenTofu workflow. This minimizes the risk of unpredictable changes and configuration drift.
:::
When you pass a saved plan file to tofu apply, OpenTofu takes the actions in the saved plan without prompting you for confirmation. You may want to use this two-step workflow when running OpenTofu in automation.
Use tofu show to inspect a saved plan file before applying it.
When using a saved plan, you cannot specify any additional planning modes or options. These options only affect OpenTofu's decisions about which actions to take, and the plan file contains the final results of those decisions.
Since ephemeral variables can't be stored in a planfile, any ephemeral variables set during the generation of a planfile from tofu plan must also be set when running tofu apply.
For example, if -var has been used to provide an ephemeral variable token to create the planfile (tofu plan -var "token=$MY_TOKEN"), the same argument must
be set for the apply command (tofu apply -var "token=$MY_TOKEN" planfile).
If required ephemeral variables are not provided to the apply command, OpenTofu will exit with a clear message of additional variables that must be specified.
Without a saved plan file, tofu apply supports all planning modes and planning options available for tofu plan.
-destroy, which creates a plan to destroy all remote objects, and -refresh-only, which creates a plan to update OpenTofu state and root module output values.The following options change how the apply command executes and reports on the apply operation.
-auto-approve - Skips interactive approval of plan before applying. This
option is ignored when you pass a previously-saved plan file, because
OpenTofu considers you passing the plan file as the approval and so
will never prompt in that case.
-compact-warnings - Shows any warning messages in a compact form which
includes only the summary messages, unless the warnings are accompanied by
at least one error and thus the warning text might be useful context for
the errors.
-consolidate-warnings=false - If OpenTofu produces any warnings, no
consolidation will be performed. All locations, for all warnings will
be listed. Enabled by default.
-consolidate-errors - If OpenTofu produces any errors, attempt to
consolidate similar messages into a single item.
-input=false - Disables all of OpenTofu's interactive prompts. Note that
this also prevents OpenTofu from prompting for interactive approval of a
plan, so OpenTofu will conservatively assume that you do not wish to
apply the plan, causing the operation to fail.
-json - Enables the machine readable JSON UI output.
This implies -input=false, so the configuration must have no unassigned
variable values to continue. To enable this flag, you must also either enable
the -auto-approve flag or specify a previously-saved plan.
-lock=false - Don't hold a state lock during the operation. This is
dangerous if others might concurrently run commands against the same
workspace.
-lock-timeout=DURATION - Unless locking is disabled with -lock=false,
instructs OpenTofu to retry acquiring a lock for a period of time before
returning an error. The duration syntax is a number followed by a time
unit letter, such as "3s" for three seconds.
-no-color - Disables terminal formatting sequences in the output. Use this
if you are running OpenTofu in a context where its output will be
rendered by a system that cannot interpret terminal formatting.
-concise - Disables progress-related messages in the output.
-parallelism=n - Limit the number of concurrent operation as OpenTofu
walks the graph. Defaults to
10.
-var 'foo=bar' - Set a variable in the OpenTofu configuration.
This flag can be set multiple times.
-var-file=foo - Set variables in the OpenTofu configuration from a file.
If "terraform.tfvars" or any ".auto.tfvars" files are present, they will
be automatically loaded.
-show-sensitive - If specified, sensitive values will not be
redacted in te UI output.
-deprecation - Specify what type of warnings are shown.
Accepted values: "module:all", "module:local", "module:none". Default: module:all. When "module:all" is selected,
OpenTofu will show the deprecation warnings for all modules. When "module:local" is selected,
the warnings will be shown only for the modules that are imported with a relative
path. When "module:none" is selected, all the deprecation warnings will be dropped.
All planning modes and
planning options for
tofu plan - Customize how OpenTofu will create the plan. Only available when you run tofu apply without a saved plan file.
For configurations using
the local backend only,
tofu apply also accepts the legacy options
-state, -state-out, and -backup.
You can further customize behavior of apply command by using environment variables. For example, the TF_STATE_PERSIST_INTERVAL environment variable allows to specify the interval between state persistence.
If your workflow relies on overriding the root module directory, use
the -chdir global option
instead, which works across all commands and makes OpenTofu consistently look
in the given directory for all files it would normally read or write in the
current working directory.