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To make all your certificates accessible, set the value to `*`.

When `WEBSITE_LOAD_CERTIFICATES` is set to `*`, all previously added certificates are accessible to application code. If you add a certificate to your app later, restart the app to make the new certificate accessible to your app. For more information, see [Update or renew a certificate](#update-or-renew-a-certificate).

## Load certificates in Windows apps

The `WEBSITE_LOAD_CERTIFICATES` app setting makes the specified certificates accessible to your Windows hosted app in the Windows certificate store, in [Current User\My](/windows-hardware/drivers/install/local-machine-and-current-user-certificate-stores).

In C# code, you access the certificate by using the certificate thumbprint. The following code loads a certificate with the thumbprint `E661583E8FABEF4C0BEF694CBC41C28FB81CD870`.

For languages that don't support or offer insufficient support for the Windows certificate store, see [Load a certificate from a file](#load-a-certificate-from-a-file).

## Load a certificate from a file

If you need to load a certificate file that you upload manually, it's better to upload the certificate by using [File Transfer Protocol Secure (FTPS)](deploy-ftp.md) instead of [Git](deploy-local-git.md), for example. Keep sensitive data like a private certificate out of source control.

ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core on Windows must access the certificate store even if you load a certificate from a file. To load a certificate file in a Windows .NET app, load the current user profile with the following command in <a target="_blank" href="https://shell.azure.com" >Cloud Shell</a>:

 

### [Windows](#tab/windows)

The following C# example shows how to load a public certificate in a .NET Framework app in a Windows Server Core container.

In Java code, you access the certificate from the `Windows-MY` store by using the **Subject Common Name** field. For more information, see [Public key certificate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_certificate). The following code shows how to load a private key certificate:

To see how to load a TLS/SSL certificate from a file in Node.js, PHP, Python, or Java, see the documentation for the respective language or web platform.

## Load certificates in Linux/Windows containers

The `WEBSITE_LOAD_CERTIFICATES` app setting makes the specified certificates accessible to your Windows or Linux custom containers (including built-in Linux containers) as files. The files are found under the following directories:

| Container platform | Public certificates | Private certificates |
| - | - | - |
| Windows container | `C:\appservice\certificates\public` | `C:\appservice\certificates\private` |
| Linux container | `/var/ssl/certs` | `/var/ssl/private` |

The certificate file names are the certificate thumbprints.

> [!NOTE]
> App Service injects the certificate paths into Windows containers as the following environment variables: `WEBSITE_PRIVATE_CERTS_PATH`, `WEBSITE_INTERMEDIATE_CERTS_PATH`, `WEBSITE_PUBLIC_CERTS_PATH`, and `WEBSITE_ROOT_CERTS_PATH`. It's better to reference the certificate path with the environment variables instead of hardcoding the certificate path, in case the certificate paths change in the future.
>

In addition, [Windows Server Core and Windows Nano Server containers](configure-custom-container.md#supported-parent-images) load the certificates into the certificate store automatically, in `LocalMachine\My`. To load the certificates, follow the same pattern as shown in [Load certificates in Windows apps](#load-certificates-in-windows-apps). For Windows Nano-based containers, use the file paths as shown in [Load a certificate from a file](#load-a-certificate-from-a-file).

### [Linux](#tab/linux)

The following C# code shows how to load a public certificate in a Linux app.

The following C# example shows how to load a public certificate in a .NET Core app in a Windows Server Core or Windows Nano Server container.