The gcloud CLI cheat sheet

A roster of go-to commands for the Google Cloud CLI, the primary command-line tool for Google Cloud.

(Also included: introductory primer, understanding commands, and a printable PDF.)

Cheat sheet

Getting started

Get going with the gcloud CLI.

• gcloud init: Initialize, authorize, and configure the gcloud CLI.
• gcloud version: Display version and installed components.
• gcloud components install: Install specific components.
• gcloud components update: Update your gcloud CLI to the latest version.
• gcloud config set project: Set a default Google Cloud project to work on.
• gcloud info: Display current gcloud CLI environment details.

Help

gcloud CLI is happy to help.

• gcloud help: Search the gcloud CLI reference documents for specific terms.
• gcloud feedback: Provide feedback to the gcloud CLI team.
• gcloud topic: Supplementary help material for non-command topics like accessibility, filtering, and formatting.

Personalization

Make the gcloud CLI your own; personalize your configuration with properties.

• gcloud config set: Define a property (like compute/zone) for the current configuration.
• gcloud config get: Fetch the value of a gcloud CLI property.
• gcloud config list: Display all the properties for the current configuration.
• gcloud config configurations create: Create a new named configuration.
• gcloud config configurations list: Display a list of all available configurations.
• gcloud config configurations activate: Switch to an existing named configuration.

Authorization and Credentials

Grant and revoke authorization to the gcloud CLI and manage credentials.

• gcloud auth login: Authorize Google Cloud access for the gcloud CLI with Google Cloud user credentials and set the current account as active.
• gcloud auth activate-service-account: Authorize Google Cloud access similar to gcloud auth login but with service account credentials.
• gcloud auth application-default: Manage your Application Default Credentials (ADC) for Cloud Client Libraries.
• gcloud auth list: List all credentialed accounts.
• gcloud auth print-access-token: Display the current account's access token.
• gcloud auth revoke: Remove access credentials for an account.

Projects

Manage project access policies.

• gcloud projects describe: Display metadata for a project (including its ID).
• gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding: Add an IAM policy binding to a specified project.

IAM

Configuring Identity and Access Management (IAM) preferences and service accounts.

• gcloud iam list-grantable-roles: List IAM grantable roles for a resource.
• gcloud iam roles create: Create a custom role for a project or org.
• gcloud iam service-accounts create: Create a service account for a project.
• gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding: Add an IAM policy binding to a service account.
• gcloud iam service-accounts set-iam-policy-binding: Replace existing IAM policy binding.
• gcloud iam service-accounts keys list: List a service account's keys.

Docker & Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Manage containerized applications on Kubernetes.

• gcloud auth configure-docker: Register the gcloud CLI as a Docker credential helper.
• gcloud container clusters create: Create a cluster to run GKE containers.
• gcloud container clusters list: List clusters for running GKE containers.
• gcloud container clusters get-credentials: Update kubeconfig to get kubectl to use a GKE cluster.
• gcloud container images list-tags: List tag and digest metadata for a container image.

Virtual Machines & Compute Engine

Create, run, and manage VMs on Google Cloud infrastructure.

• gcloud compute zones list: List Compute Engine zones.
• gcloud compute instances create: Create a VM instance.
• gcloud compute instances describe: Display a VM instance's details.
• gcloud compute instances list: List all VM instances in a project.
• gcloud compute disks snapshot: Create snapshot of persistent disks.
• gcloud compute snapshots describe: Display a snapshot's details.
• gcloud compute snapshots delete: Delete a snapshot.
• gcloud compute ssh: Connect to a VM instance by using SSH.

Serverless & App Engine

Build highly scalable applications on a fully managed serverless platform

• gcloud app deploy: Deploy your app's code and configuration to the App Engine server.
• gcloud app versions list: List all versions of all services deployed to the App Engine server.
• gcloud app browse: Open the current app in a web browser.
• gcloud app create: Create an App Engine app within your current project.
• gcloud app logs read: Display the latest App Engine app logs.

Miscellaneous

Commands that might come in handy

• gcloud kms decrypt: Decrypt ciphertext (to a plaintext file) using a Cloud Key Management Service key.
• gcloud logging logs list: List your project's logs.
• gcloud sql backups describe: Display info about a Cloud SQL instance backup.
• gcloud sql export sql: Export data from a Cloud SQL instance to a SQL file.

Introductory primer

A quick primer for getting started with the gcloud CLI.

Installing the Google Cloud CLI

Install the Google Cloud CLI with these installation instructions.

Flags, arguments, and other wondrous additions

Arguments can be positional arguments or flags:

• Positional args: Set after command name; must respect order of positional args.

• Flags: Set after positional args; order of flags doesn’t matter.

  A flag can be either a:

  • Name-value pair (--foo=bar), or
  • Boolean (--force/no-force).

  Additionally, flags can either be:

  • Required
  • Optional: If an optional flag is not defined, the default value is used

Global flags

Some flags are available throughout the gcloud CLI experience, like:

• --help: For when in doubt; display detailed help for a command.
• --project: If using a project other than the current one.
• --quiet: Disabling interactive prompting (and applying default values for inputs).
• --verbosity: Can set verbosity levels at debug, info, warning, error, critical, and none.
• --version: Display gcloud version information.
• --format: Set output format as config, csv, default, diff, disable, flattened, get, json, list, multi, none, object, table, text, value, or yaml.

Cleaning up results

Get the most from your output with the filter, format, limit, and sort-by flags.

For Compute Engine instances with prefix us and not machine type f1-micro:

gcloud compute instances list --filter="zone ~ ^us AND -machineType:f1-micro"

For a list of projects created on or after 15 January 2018, sorted from oldest to newest, presented as a table with project number, project id and creation time columns with dates and times in local timezone:

gcloud projects list --format="table(projectNumber,projectId,createTime.date(tz=LOCAL))"
--filter="createTime>=2018-01-15T12:00:00" --sort-by=createTime

For a list of ten Compute Engine instances with a label my-label (of any value):

gcloud compute instances list --filter="labels.my-label:*" --limit=10

Understanding commands

The underlying patterns for gcloud CLI commands; to aid self-discovery of commands.

Finding gcloud CLI commands

The gcloud CLI is a tree; non-leaf nodes are command groups and leaf nodes are commands. (Also, tab completion works for commands and resources!)

Most gcloud commands follow the following format:

gcloud + release level (optional) + component + entity + operation + positional args + flags

For example: gcloud + compute + instances + create + example-instance-1 + --zone=us-central1-a

Release level

Release Level refers to the command’s release status.

Example: alpha for alpha commands, beta for beta commands, no release level needed for GA commands.

Component

Component refers to the different Google Cloud services.

Example: compute for Compute Engine, app for App Engine, etc.

Entity

Entity refers to the plural form of an element or collection of elements under a component.

Example: disks, firewalls, images, instances, regions, zones for compute

Operation

Operation refers to the imperative verb form of the operation to be performed on the entity.

Example: Common operations are describe, list, create/update, delete/clear, import, export, copy, remove, add, reset, restart, restore, run, and deploy.

Positional args

Positional args refer to the required, order-specific arguments needed to execute the command.

Example: <INSTANCE_NAMES> is the required positional argument for gcloud compute instances create.

Flags

Flags refer to the additional arguments, --flag-name(=value), passed in to the command after positional args.

Example: --machine-type=<MACHINE_TYPE> and --preemptible are optional flags for gcloud compute instances create.