[logging] Spring Boot: How can I set the logging level with application.properties?

You can do that using your application.properties.

logging.level.=ERROR -> Sets the root logging level to error
...
logging.level.=DEBUG -> Sets the root logging level to DEBUG

logging.file=${java.io.tmpdir}/myapp.log -> Sets the absolute log file path to TMPDIR/myapp.log

A sane default set of application.properties regarding logging using profiles would be: application.properties:

spring.application.name=<your app name here>
logging.level.=ERROR
logging.file=${java.io.tmpdir}/${spring.application.name}.log

application-dev.properties:

logging.level.=DEBUG
logging.file=

When you develop inside your favourite IDE you just add a -Dspring.profiles.active=dev as VM argument to the run/debug configuration of your app.

This will give you error only logging in production and debug logging during development WITHOUT writing the output to a log file. This will improve the performance during development ( and save SSD drives some hours of operation ;) ).