ElevenLabs TTS fails with 'Invalid URL' error due to Windows line endings in .env file

[lliWcWill]

What happened?

ElevenLabs TTS "Invalid URL" Fix

Problem

ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech was failing with "Invalid URL" error when trying to generate speech.

Root Cause

The .env file contained Windows-style line endings (CRLF - \r\n) instead of Unix-style line endings (LF - \n).

When the Docker container (Linux-based) read the environment variables, it included the carriage return character (\r) as part of the API key value, making it:

TTS_API_KEY=sk_8j6u2...c8hg\r

This invisible \r character in the HTTP header caused axios to throw an "Invalid URL" error because HTTP headers cannot contain carriage return characters.

Environment Details

• Host OS: Windows
• Development Environment: WSL2 Debian 12
• IDE: Cursor
• Application: LibreChat running in Docker containers

Solution

Remove carriage returns from the .env file:

sed -i 's/\r$//' .env

Prevention

To prevent this issue in the future when working with WSL:

1. Configure your IDE (Cursor/VS Code) to use LF line endings for .env files
2. Add a .gitattributes file with:

   .env text eol=lf
   *.env text eol=lf
   

3. Use dos2unix command on Windows-created files before using them in WSL/Docker

Additional Notes

• The actual ElevenLabs API key was valid
• Once line endings were fixed, a secondary issue was discovered: ElevenLabs subscription had a payment issue
• After resolving both issues, TTS worked perfectly

Code Changes Made

• Added voice validation in client/src/hooks/Input/useTextToSpeechExternal.ts to prevent empty voice parameters
• No other code changes were necessary - the issue was purely configuration-related

Version Information

librechat/librechat-dev latest a74e99cdfe84 45 hours ago 1.11GB
ghcr.io/danny-avila/librechat-rag-api-dev-lite latest 8858d2bd9ff5 6 days ago 1.48GB
librechat/librechat-dev e6f1d6b9f0fd 2 weeks ago 1.11GB
librechat/librechat-dev 9bab928b3d9b 3 weeks ago 1.11GB
ghcr.io/danny-avila/librechat-rag-api-dev-lite 6a1dfa1c7fe0 3 weeks ago 1.47GB
librechat/librechat-dev 81bf2def0a96 3 weeks ago 1.08GB
librechat/librechat-dev fae62246f0ce 3 months ago 953MB
ghcr.io/danny-avila/librechat-rag-api-dev-lite 817faebddae9 3 months ago 1.31GB
librechat/librechat-dev 782f80a8c1e4 4 months ago 888MB
librechat/librechat-dev e59f99c159d5 5 months ago 865MB
librechat/librechat-dev 46fa79e130dd 5 months ago 856MB
librechat/librechat-dev 6f44a2bdbcd5 6 months ago 893MB
ghcr.io/danny-avila/librechat-rag-api-dev-lite 095db2c2ff3b 7 months ago 1.29GB
librechat/librechat-dev 670428d9310f 7 months ago 855MB
ghcr.io/danny-avila/librechat-rag-api-dev-lite 0c9252dfa7de 7 months ago 2.1GB

Steps to Reproduce

1. Clone LibreChat repository on Windows machine
2. Create/edit .env file using a Windows text editor (VS Code, Cursor, Notepad, etc.)
3. Add ElevenLabs API configuration:

   TTS_API_KEY=sk_your_elevenlabs_api_key_here
   

4. Configure librechat.yaml with ElevenLabs TTS settings:

   speech:
     tts:
       elevenlabs:
         apiKey: '${TTS_API_KEY}'
         model: 'eleven_multilingual_v2'
         voices: ['21m00Tcm4TlvDq8ikWAM', 'AZnzlk1XvdvUeBnXmlld']

5. Start application with docker compose up
6. Navigate to LibreChat UI and attempt to use Text-to-Speech feature
7. Click the speaker icon on any message
8. Observe error in Docker logs

What browsers are you seeing the problem on?

Chrome

Relevant log output

Log Locations

**Docker**: 
- Container logs: `docker logs LibreChat`
- Persisted logs: `./logs/`

**Local/npm**: 
- API logs: `./api/logs/`
- Debug logs: `./api/logs/debug-{date}.log`
- Error logs: `./api/logs/error-{date}.log`

**To view Docker logs with TTS errors**:

docker logs LibreChat --tail 50 | grep -E "TTS|error|elevenLabs"



2025-07-16 19:31:18 [31merror[39m: [31mTTS request failed for provider elevenlabs: Invalid URL[39m
2025-07-16 19:31:18 [31merror[39m: [31m[ttsRequest] Failed URL was: https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/text-to-speech/NYC9WEgkq1u4jiqBseQ9/stream[39m
2025-07-16 19:31:18 [31merror[39m: [31m[ttsRequest] Error details: Invalid URL[39m
2025-07-16 19:31:18 [31merror[39m: [31mError creating the audio stream: Invalid URL[39m


When testing the API directly, the actual error reveals:

Error occurred: Invalid character in header content ["xi-api-key"]
Error code: ERR_INVALID_CHAR


The API key in the header contained a carriage return character: `sk_[api_key]\r`

Screenshots

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[danny-avila]

Enclose the variable with quotation marks. Example:

TTS_API_KEY="sk_your_secret_key"

[lliWcWill]

hey thanks for the quick response! i actually tried that first but the issue persists with or without quotes.

the root cause is windows line endings (CRLF) in the .env file. when docker reads it, the carriage return \r
becomes part of the api key value, causing axios to throw "Invalid character in header content".

fix that worked:
sed -i 's/\r$//' .env

this is specific to windows users with wsl/docker. might be worth adding a .gitattributes to enforce LF endings
for .env files?