Enable the Secret Manager API

Secret Manager exposes a REST API and a gRPC API for using and managing secrets directly or in your applications. This page describes how to enable the Secret Manager API and configure your Google Cloud project to use Secret Manager for the first time.

This step is a prerequisite for all tasks in Secret Manager, including the quickstart.

When you are becoming familiar with Secret Manager, we recommend using a separate Google Cloud project. Deleting the project also deletes all resources created during testing, including billable resources.

If you are developing an application in an IDE with Cloud Code installed, Secret Manager comes integrated into the extension. This means that you can create, view, update, and use secrets without having to leave your IDE. For more on using Secret Manager with Cloud Code, refer to the secret managing guide for your preferred IDE, VS Code, IntelliJ, or Cloud Shell Editor.

Before you begin

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the project selector page.

    Go to project selector

  2. Select or create a Google Cloud project.

Enable the Secret Manager API

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Secret Manager API page.

    Go to Secret Manager API

  2. Verify that the name of your project appears in the project selector at the top of the page.

    If you don't see the name of your project, click the project selector, and then select your project.

  3. Click Enable.

gcloud

  1. In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.

    Activate Cloud Shell

    At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.

  2. To set your Google Cloud project in the gcloud session, run the gcloud config set project command. Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project ID. 
    gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
  3. To enable the Secret Manager API, run the gcloud services enable command: 
    gcloud services enable secretmanager.googleapis.com
  4. To verify that the Secret Manager API is enabled, run the gcloud services list command: 
    gcloud services list --enabled

    Verify that the Secret Manager API is listed in the list of enabled APIs.

Configure roles and permissions

To get the permissions that you need to set up Secret Manager, ask your administrator to grant you the Secret Manager Admin (roles/secretmanager.admin) IAM role on the project. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

For more information about the access control for Secret Manager, see Access control with IAM.

What's next