# Changing index template settings from default
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-index-template-settings-from-default/175273
**Category:** Beats
**Tags:** filebeat
**Created:** [April 3, 2019, 8:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-index-template-settings-from-default/175273 "2019-04-03T20:53:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jkaoiadjmdna](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jkaoiadjmdna)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2019, 8:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-index-template-settings-from-default/175273/1 "2019-04-03T20:53:06Z")
I'd like to adjust the defaults on the generally default configuration of filebeat to reduce shards from the default of 5 to 1. Do I need to configure filebeats for this change to apply going forward, or can I do this using the ES `PUT _template/template_1`-style API? I see the default template index in ES, but am unclear the order that these are created/accessed. Any other things to be aware of when modifying filebeat settings like this?
I'm a bit new to it all, but preparing an existing cluster for a migration to Elastic Cloud (got a lot of cleanup to do first) so this is one aspect I want to tune sooner than later. I read the docs about this, but couldn't get a confident answer if a template index is created once by filebeat, or each time an index is added (daily, by the defaults), etc.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2019, 8:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-index-template-settings-from-default/175273/2 "2019-05-01T20:53:14Z")
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