Most OpenSearch configuration can take place in the cluster settings API. Certain operations require you to modify `opensearch.yml` and restart the cluster.
Whenever possible, use the cluster settings API instead; `opensearch.yml` is local to each node, whereas the API applies the setting to all nodes in the cluster. Certain settings, however, require `opensearch.yml`. In general, these settings relate to networking, cluster formation, and the local file system. To learn more, see [Cluster formation]({{site.url}}{{site.baseurl}}/opensearch/cluster/).
The first step in changing a setting is to view the current settings:
```
GET _cluster/settings?include_defaults=true
```
For a more concise summary of non-default settings:
```
GET _cluster/settings
```
Three categories of setting exist in the cluster settings API: persistent, transient, and default. Persistent settings, well, persist after a cluster restart. After a restart, OpenSearch clears transient settings.
If you specify the same setting in multiple places, OpenSearch uses the following precedence:
1. Transient settings
2. Persistent settings
3. Settings from `opensearch.yml`
4. Default settings
To change a setting, just specify the new one as either persistent or transient. This example shows the flat settings form:
You can find `opensearch.yml` in `/usr/share/opensearch/config/opensearch.yml` (Docker) or `/etc/opensearch/opensearch.yml` (most Linux distributions) on each node.
You can edit the `OPENSEARCH_PATH_CONF=/etc/opensearch` to change the config directory location. This variable is sourced from `/etc/default/opensearch`(Debian package) and `/etc/sysconfig/opensearch`(RPM package).
If you set your customized `OPENSEARCH_PATH_CONF` variable, be aware that other default environment variables will not be loaded.
The demo configuration includes a number of settings for the security plugin that you should modify before using OpenSearch for a production workload. To learn more, see [Security]({{site.url}}{{site.baseurl}}/security/).
If you are working on a client application running against an OpenSearch cluster on a different domain, you can configure headers in `opensearch.yml` to allow for developing a local application on the same machine. Use [Cross Origin Resource Sharing](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS) so your application can make calls to the OpenSearch API running locally. Add the following lines in your `custom-opensearch.yml` file (note that the "-" must be the first character in each line).