# How to mint FLOW Tokens in the Emulator

**URL:** <https://forum.flow.com/t/how-to-mint-flow-tokens-in-the-emulator/785>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [January 19, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://forum.flow.com/t/how-to-mint-flow-tokens-in-the-emulator/785 "2021-01-19T15:48:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![flowjosh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forum.flow.com/flowjosh/32/362_2.png) [@flowjosh](https://forum.flow.com/u/flowjosh)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://forum.flow.com/t/how-to-mint-flow-tokens-in-the-emulator/785/1 "2021-01-19T15:48:38Z")

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The emulator runs a local version of the flow blockchain for developers to use for testing their smart contracts. Whenever you start an instance of the emulator, you have access to all the configuration options and keys. The `FlowToken` contract and the `FungibleToken` contracts are automatically deployed to the emulator on startup, (see emulator addresses [here](https://docs.onflow.org/core-contracts/fungible-token/)) and minting FLOW is controlled by the Service account, which is also pre-created at startup.

You can access the service account and service account keys within your testing code to run [this transaction](https://github.com/onflow/flow-core-contracts/blob/master/transactions/flowToken/mint_tokens.cdc) to mint Flow Tokens.

Here is an example of how this is done in the Go tests for the core contracts:

> <https://github.com/onflow/flow-core-contracts/blob/master/lib/go/test/staking_test_helpers.go#L77>

I’ll look for a JS example also