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I recently came across something that made me curious to start this discussion.
A person's answer to a question was
if it doesn't work your .env file replace with APP_KEY=base64:jxfiwITVfhauwt6clRR2plSXNg+KHlDbgIUQYIXvkVI=
As far as I understand that APP_KEY is for encrypting and not hashing. So is manually putting an APP_KEY a good idea since it's auto generated?
Is not good idea to manually change it, since it's used for encryption, such as cookie.
There is a command line php artisan key:generate which is better way to generate it.
See this article to know more about it https://tighten.co/blog/app-key-and-you
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