When Drupal 8 was in beta this was changed intentionally to avoid bleeding of overridden values into configuration when you save it, see the change record [Configuration objects by default are immutable][1]. This is what the configuration form does in static code: \Drupal::configFactory()->getEditable('system.site')->set('name', 'My fantastic site')->save(); For Drupal 8.5 it is discussed to display a warning in the configuration form, that there are overridden values: > This form contains values that have been overridden. Changes to these > values can still be saved, but the overridden values will take > precedence. Overrides are as follows See the issue https://www.drupal.org/node/2408549 [1]: https://www.drupal.org/node/2407153