This document describes how to enable or disable virtual displays on a virtual machine (VM) instance.
If an application running on your VM requires a display device, but you don't need the performance of a GPU, then configure your VM to use virtual display devices. By enabling virtual displays on a VM, you can run virtual display devices on the VM, such as remote system management tools, remote desktop software, and screen capturing.
Before you begin
-
If you haven't already, then set up authentication.
Authentication is
the process by which your identity is verified for access to Google Cloud services and APIs.
To run code or samples from a local development environment, you can authenticate to
Compute Engine by selecting one of the following options:
Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:
Console
When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.
gcloud
-
Install the Google Cloud CLI, then initialize it by running the following command:
gcloud init
- Set a default region and zone.
Terraform
To use the Terraform samples on this page in a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI, and then set up Application Default Credentials with your user credentials.
- Install the Google Cloud CLI.
-
To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:
gcloud init
-
If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:
gcloud auth application-default login
You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.
For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.
REST
To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.
Install the Google Cloud CLI, then initialize it by running the following command:
gcloud init
For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
-
Required roles
To get the permissions that you need to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM,
ask your administrator to grant you the
Compute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1
) IAM role on the project.
For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.
This predefined role contains the permissions required to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:
Required permissions
The following permissions are required to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM:
-
To enable or disable virtual displays on an existing VM:
compute.instances.updateDisplayDevice
on the VM -
To create a VM with virtual displays enabled:
compute.instances.create
on the project- To use a custom image to create the VM:
compute.images.useReadOnly
on the image - To use a snapshot to create the VM:
compute.snapshots.useReadOnly
on the snapshot - To use an instance template to create the VM:
compute.instanceTemplates.useReadOnly
on the instance template - To assign a legacy network to the VM:
compute.networks.use
on the project - To specify a static IP address for the VM:
compute.addresses.use
on the project - To assign an external IP address to the VM when using a legacy network:
compute.networks.useExternalIp
on the project - To specify a subnet for the VM:
compute.subnetworks.use
on the project or on the chosen subnet - To assign an external IP address to the VM when using a VPC network:
compute.subnetworks.useExternalIp
on the project or on the chosen subnet - To set VM instance metadata for the VM:
compute.instances.setMetadata
on the project - To set tags for the VM:
compute.instances.setTags
on the VM - To set labels for the VM:
compute.instances.setLabels
on the VM - To set a service account for the VM to use:
compute.instances.setServiceAccount
on the VM - To create a new disk for the VM:
compute.disks.create
on the project - To attach an existing disk in read-only or read-write mode:
compute.disks.use
on the disk - To attach an existing disk in read-only mode:
compute.disks.useReadOnly
on the disk
You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.
Pricing
There are no costs associated with enabling or disabling virtual displays on a VM.
Restrictions
For VMs with virtual displays enabled, the following limitations apply:
If your VM is running an x64-based Windows OS image earlier than version
v20190312
, then, after enabling virtual displays on your VM, you must install the virtual display driver as described in this document. If your VM is running a later OS image version, then the driver is already installed on the OS image.You can use a virtual display device on the VM only after the guest OS boots and initializes the virtual display driver.
You can't use virtual display devices on VMs that run the Sandy Bridge CPU platform.
You can't use virtual display devices on T2A Arm VMs.
Enable virtual displays on a VM
To enable virtual displays on a VM, select one of the following methods described in this document:
If your VM is running an x64-based Windows OS image earlier than version
v20190312
, then, after you enable virtual displays on the VM,
install the virtual display driver as described in this
document.
Create a VM with virtual displays enabled
To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, select one of the following options:
Console
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create an instance page.
Specify the properties for the VM, including the name, zone, and machine type.
In the Display device section, select the Enable display device checkbox.
To create the VM, click Create.
gcloud
To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, use the
gcloud compute instances create
command
with the --enable-display-device
flag.
gcloud compute instances create VM_NAME \
--enable-display-device \
--machine-type=MACHINE_TYPE \
--zone=ZONE
Replace the following:
VM_NAME
: the name of the VM.MACHINE_TYPE
: the machine type to use for the VM.ZONE
: the zone in which to create the VM.
Terraform
To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, use the
Terraform resource
with the enable_display
argument set to true
.
For example, to create a VM in zone us-central1-c
with virtual displays
enabled, and specify f1-micro
as the machine type, use the following
resource:
REST
To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, make a POST
request to the
instances.insert
method.
In the request body, include the enableDisplay
field set to true
.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances
{
"name": "VM_NAME",
"machineType": "zones/ZONE/machineTypes/MACHINE_TYPE",
"disks": [
{
"boot": true,
"initializeParams": {
"sourceImage": "project/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/IMAGE"
}
}
],
"displayDevice": {
"enableDisplay": true
},
"networkInterfaces": [
{
"network": "global/networks/default"
}
]
}
Replace the following:
PROJECT_ID
: the ID of the project in which to create the VM.ZONE
: the zone in which to create the VM.VM_NAME
: the name of the VM.MACHINE_TYPE
: the machine type to use for the VM.IMAGE_PROJECT
: the image project that contains the OS image—for example,debian-cloud
. For more information about the supported image projects, see Public images.IMAGE
: specify one of the following:A specific version of the OS image—for example,
debian-12-bookworm-v20240617
.An image family, which must be formatted as
family/IMAGE_FAMILY
. This specifies the most recent, non-deprecated OS image. For example, if you specifyfamily/debian-12
, the latest version in the Debian 12 image family is used. For more information about using image families, see Image families best practices.
For more information about creating a VM, see Create and start a Compute Engine instance.
Enable virtual displays on an existing VM
Before enabling virtual displays on a VM, make sure to stop the VM.
To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, select one of the following options:
Console
In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.
In the Name column, click the name of the VM.
The details page of the VM opens.
Click
Edit.The page to edit the VM's properties opens.
In the Display device section, select the Enable display device checkbox.
Click Save.
gcloud
To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, use the
gcloud compute instances update
command
with the --enable-display-device
flag.
gcloud compute instances update VM_NAME \
--enable-display-device \
--zone=ZONE
Replace the following:
VM_NAME
: the name of the VM.ZONE
: the zone where the VM is located.
REST
To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, make a POST
request to the
instances.updateDisplayDevice
method.
In the request body, include the enableDisplay
field and set it to true
.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/VM_NAME/updateDisplayDevice
{
"enableDisplay": true
}
Replace the following:
PROJECT_ID
: the ID of the project where the VM is located.ZONE
: the zone where the VM is located.VM_NAME
: the name of the VM.
Disable virtual displays on an existing VM
Before disabling virtual displays on a VM, make sure to stop the VM.
To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, select one of the following options:
Console
In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.
In the Name column, click the name of the VM.
The details page of the VM opens.
Click
Edit.The page to edit the VM's properties opens.
In the Display device section, clear the Enable display device checkbox.
Click Save.
gcloud
To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, use the
gcloud compute instances update
command
with the --no-enable-display-device
flag.
gcloud compute instances update VM_NAME \
--no-enable-display-device \
--zone=ZONE
Replace the following:
VM_NAME
: the name of the VM.ZONE
: the zone where the VM is located.
REST
To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, make a POST
request to the
instances.updateDisplayDevice
method.
In the request body, include the enableDisplay
field and set it to
false
.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/VM_NAME/updateDisplayDevice
{
"enableDisplay": false
}
Replace the following:
PROJECT_ID
: the ID of the project where the VM is located.ZONE
: the zone where the VM is located.VM_NAME
: the name of the VM.
Install the virtual display driver
If you've enabled virtual displays on a Windows VM that runs a Windows OS image
earlier than version v20190312
, then, to use a virtual display device on the
VM, you must install the virtual display driver provided by Google Cloud. If the
VM runs a more recent OS image version, then the driver is already installed and
you can skip this section.
To install the virtual display driver on a VM with virtual displays enabled, do the following:
Open a PowerShell terminal as an administrator.
Install the
google-compute-engine-driver-gga
component:googet install google-compute-engine-driver-gga
After you restart the VM, you can verify that the driver was correctly installed as described in the next section.
Verify the virtual display driver installation
If you had to manually install the virtual display driver on a Windows VM as described in the previous section, then you can verify that the installation was successful by doing the following:
If you haven't already, connect to the Windows VM.
Open Device Manager.
In the Device Manager list, in the Display adapters list, make sure that the Google Graphics Array (GGA) driver is listed.
If the driver isn't listed, then reinstall the virtual display driver as described in this document.
What's next
Learn how to set up Chrome Remote Desktop on Linux VMs.
Learn how to connect to Windows VMs using RDP.