> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://private-7c7dfe99-fix-nav-issues.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

> Overview page for settings.

# Settings Overview

<h2 id="overview">
  Overview
</h2>

<Note>
  XML-based Settings Profiles and [configuration files](/concepts/features/configuration/server-config/configuration-files) are currently not
  supported for ClickHouse Cloud. To specify settings for your ClickHouse Cloud
  service, you must use [SQL-driven Settings Profiles](/concepts/features/security/access-rights#settings-profiles-management).
</Note>

There are following main groups of ClickHouse settings:

* Global server settings
* Session settings
* Query settings
* Background operations settings

Global settings apply by default unless overridden at further levels. Session settings can be specified via profiles, user configuration and SET commands. Query settings can be provided via SETTINGS clause and are applied to individual queries. Background operations settings are applied to Mutations, Merges and potentially other operations, executed asynchronously in the background.

<h2 id="see-non-default-settings">
  Viewing non-default settings
</h2>

To view which settings have been changed from their default value you can query the
`system.settings` table:

```sql theme={null}
SELECT name, value FROM system.settings WHERE changed
```

If no settings have been changed from their default value, then ClickHouse will
return nothing.

To check the value of a particular setting, you can specify the `name` of the
setting in your query:

```sql theme={null}
SELECT name, value FROM system.settings WHERE name = 'max_threads'
```

Which will return something like this:

```response theme={null}
┌─name────────┬─value─────┐
│ max_threads │ 'auto(8)' │
└─────────────┴───────────┘

1 row in set. Elapsed: 0.002 sec.
```

<h2 id="further-reading">
  Further reading
</h2>

* See [global server settings](/reference/settings/server-settings/settings) to learn more about configuring your
  ClickHouse server at the global server level.
* See [session settings](/concepts/features/configuration/settings/settings-query-level) to learn more about configuring your ClickHouse
  server at the session level.
* See [context hierarchy](/resources/develop-contribute/introduction/architecture#context) to learn more about configuration processing by Clickhouse.