# Kibana uiSettings overrides

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-uisettings-overrides/391542>\
**Category:** Kibana\
**Created:** [November 12, 2026, 12:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-uisettings-overrides/391542 "2026-11-12T12:23:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![DOBs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6de8d8/32.png) [@DOBs](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DOBs)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2026, 12:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-uisettings-overrides/391542/1 "2026-11-12T12:23:53Z")

</div>

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been posted about before - I couldn't find anything about this specific problem.

I'm running Kibana 8.19

I'm trying to use the uisettings overrides in Kibana.yml, as documented [here](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/kibana/advanced-settings)

They've mostly worked like a charm except for defaultColumns and metaFields. I've tried a bunch of variations (ok, maybe 3) and they all have their own issues

# 1. these seem closest to the documented type of string, but the logs show they don't pass validation and cause Kibana to continuously restart. The logs mention something about needing to be arrays...

```auto
metaFields: "_source,_id,_type,_index,_score,_size"

defaultColumns: "message"

```

# 2. .... so I tried a direct array, and Kibana can start but on the adcanced settings page when I view those two settings they show up big red boxes. Additionally, in discover, the default columns are made up of the characters in "message"

```auto
    metaFields: ["_source","_id","_type","_index","_score","_size"]
    defaultColumns: ["message"]

```

# 3. Some AI suggested they need to be passed as strings containing JSON which Kibana could then convert into JSON so I tried that, but had the same symptoms as above

```auto
    metaFields: '["_source","_id","_type","_index","_score","_size"]'
    defaultColumns: '["message"]'

```

What am I doing wrong?

Cheers!

Daire