prometheus/docs/feature_flags.md

---
title: Feature Flags
sort_rank: 11
---

# Feature Flags

Here is a list of features that are disabled by default since they are breaking changes or are considered experimental.
Their behaviour can change in future releases which will be communicated via the [release changelog](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md).

You can enable them using the `--enable-feature` flag with a comma separated list of features.
They may be enabled by default in future versions.

## `@` Modifier in PromQL

`--enable-feature=promql-at-modifier`

The `@` modifier lets you specify the evaluation time for instant vector selectors,
range vector selectors, and subqueries. More details can be found [here](querying/basics.md#modifier).

## Expand environment variables in external labels

`--enable-feature=expand-external-labels`

Replace `${var}` or `$var` in the [`external_labels`](configuration/configuration.md#configuration-file)
values according to the values of the current environment variables. References
to undefined variables are replaced by the empty string.

## Negative offset in PromQL

This negative offset is disabled by default since it breaks the invariant
that PromQL does not look ahead of the evaluation time for samples.

`--enable-feature=promql-negative-offset`

In contrast to the positive offset modifier, the negative offset modifier lets
one shift a vector selector into the future.  An example in which one may want
to use a negative offset is reviewing past data and making temporal comparisons
with more recent data.

More details can be found [here](querying/basics.md#offset-modifier).

## Remote Write Receiver

`--enable-feature=remote-write-receiver`

The remote write receiver allows Prometheus to accept remote write requests from other Prometheus servers. More details can be found [here](storage.md#overview).

## Exemplars Storage

`--enable-feature=exemplar-storage`

[OpenMetrics](https://github.com/OpenObservability/OpenMetrics/blob/main/specification/OpenMetrics.md#exemplars) introduces the ability for scrape targets to add exemplars to certain metrics. Exemplars are references to data outside of the MetricSet. A common use case are IDs of program traces.

Exemplar storage is implemented as a fixed size circular buffer that stores exemplars in memory for all series. Enabling this feature will enable the storage of exemplars scraped by Prometheus. The flag `storage.exemplars.exemplars-limit` can be used to control the size of circular buffer by # of exemplars. An exemplar with just a `traceID=<jaeger-trace-id>` uses roughly 100 bytes of memory via the in-memory exemplar storage. If the exemplar storage is enabled, we will also append the exemplars to WAL for local persistence (for WAL duration).

## Memory Snapshot on Shutdown

`--enable-feature=memory-snapshot-on-shutdown`

This takes the snapshot of the chunks that are in memory along with the series information when shutting down and stores
it on disk. This will reduce the startup time since the memory state can be restored with this snapshot and m-mapped 
chunks without the need of WAL replay.