This page describes the ways you can configure Cloud Shell to customize your experience.
Configuration files in your Cloud Shell home directory
Cloud Shell provisions 5 GB of free
persistent disk storage mounted as
your $HOME
directory. All files you store in your home directory, including
installed software, scripts and user configuration files like .bashrc
and
.vimrc
, persist between sessions.
Since your .bashrc
persists across sessions, it's a great way to customize
your Cloud Shell behavior. Similarly, to have your installations
persist, you can install packages into your home directory.
Pre-configured environment variables
When Cloud Shell is started, the active project in
Cloud Shell is propagated to your gcloud
configuration inside
Cloud Shell for immediate use. GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
, the
environmental variable used by Application Default Credentials library support
to define project ID, is also set to point to the active project in
Cloud Shell.
The CLOUD_SHELL
environment variable is set to true
. This variable can be
checked from applications to determine if an application is running in
Cloud Shell.
gcloud CLI preferences
When using Cloud Shell, your gcloud CLI preferences
are stored in a temporary tmp
folder, set for your current tab only, and do
not persist across sessions.
To have your gcloud CLI configurations persist, you can set them using one of the following methods:
To keep your gcloud CLI configuration customizable per tab but customize the default configuration itself, you can add
gcloud
configuration commands (such asgcloud config set compute/region us-central1
to set a default region) to the end of your$HOME/.bashrc
file.This ensures that every new tab inherits your Google Cloud console project and your customized default configuration but also allows you to further customize each tab's configuration.
To always use the same gcloud CLI configuration, add
export CLOUDSDK_CONFIG=$HOME/.config/gcloud
to the end of your .bashrc file, and then rungcloud config configurations create CONFIG_NAME
to create the configuration you'd like to use.
Common properties
To set the project you'd like to work on, run:
gcloud config set project [PROJECT_NAME]
Your command prompt updates to reflect your currently active project,
respecting this format: [USERNAME]@cloudshell:~ ([PROJECT_NAME])$
To select your preferred region, run:
gcloud config set compute/region us-east1
The commands above are examples of gcloud CLI configurations you can set; for a full list and greater detail about setting properties, refer to the gcloud CLI properties guide.
Environment customization
Environment customization allows you to install additional packages into your Cloud Shell environment when it starts.
Environment customization script
Cloud Shell automatically runs the script,
$HOME/.customize_environment
, when your instance boots up. Unlike .profile
or .bashrc
, this script runs once when Cloud Shell boots
(rather than once for each shell login).
This script runs as root and you can install any packages that you want to exist in each Cloud Shell session using Debian package management commands.
For example, if you'd like to have erlang installed on Cloud Shell,
your .customize_environment
file will look like this:
#!/bin/sh
apt-get update
apt-get -y install erlang
Execution logs of your .customize_environment
script can be found
at /var/log/customize_environment
. The .customize_environment
script runs as a background process and on successful execution, will touch
/google/devshell/customize_environment_done
. Because package installation
runs in parallel with your logging in, the installed packages may become
available a few moments after you reach the login prompt.
Open Cloud Shell with a specified user account
The authuser
parameter lets you specify a user account to use with
Cloud Shell. You must be logged in with the specified user account.
If you're not logged in to the specified account, Cloud Shell
opens with the default logged in account. For example, you can open
Cloud Shell logged in as client1@example.com
using the URL
shell.cloud.google.com?authuser=client1@example.com
.
Container image customization
Container image customization allows you to create a Docker image that functions as a custom Cloud Shell environment with your specified additional packages and custom configurations. Your Docker image must be based on the base Cloud Shell image and hosted in Container Registry.
For details on how to create a custom container image, see the Customizing container image guide.
Unlike environment customization, container image customization doesn't affect your default Cloud Shell experience. You can use and share your custom image with Open in Cloud Shell links.
tmux support
Cloud Shell uses tmux
, which allows it to improve
persistence across browser tab sessions. For example, if you refresh the
Google Cloud console in a tab or connect to your Cloud Shell
from a different machine, the session state will not be lost.
Cloud Shell supports the default
tmux
key bindings. For
example, if you press Ctrl+b and then %, tmux
splits the current
session window into left and right panes, which can be useful for debugging.
Usage statistics
Cloud Shell collects anonymized usage statistics on commands that are run inside the Cloud Shell terminal. Statistics are collected only on commands that come pre-installed in the Cloud Shell. These metrics can't be tied back to your account.
Metrics aren't collected on any personally identifiable information, such as arguments passed to these commands.
To change metrics collection preferences at any time, select Terminal Usage Statistics in the Settings menu . Any change in your preferences on the Settings menu takes effect on the next session. To enable or disable metrics collection, close your tab and open another tab after you've made your change.
Note: This is separate from gcloud usage statistics, which is enabled by default in Cloud Shell.
To disable gcloud CLI metrics collection, run the following command in your Cloud Shell session:
gcloud config set disable_usage_reporting true