This page outlines the naming guidelines you should follow when creating buckets in Cloud Storage. To learn how to create a bucket, see the Creating storage buckets guide.
Bucket name requirements
Your bucket names must meet the following requirements:
- Bucket names must contain only lowercase letters, numbers, dashes (
-
), underscores (_
), and dots (.
). Spaces are not allowed. Names containing dots require verification. - Bucket names must start and end with a number or letter.
- Bucket names must contain 3-63 characters. Names containing dots can contain up to 222 characters, but each dot-separated component can be no longer than 63 characters.
- Bucket names cannot be represented as an IP address in dotted-decimal notation (for example, 192.168.5.4).
- Bucket names cannot begin with the "goog" prefix.
- Bucket names cannot contain "google" or close misspellings, such as "g00gle".
Bucket name considerations
Bucket names reside in a single Cloud Storage namespace.
This means that:
- Every bucket name must be unique.
- Bucket names are publicly visible.
If you try to create a bucket with a name that already belongs to an existing bucket, Cloud Storage responds with an error message.
A bucket name can only be assigned during creation.
You cannot change the name of an existing bucket. Instead, you should create a new bucket with the desired name and move the contents from the old bucket to the new bucket. See Moving and Renaming Buckets for a step-by-step guide.
Once you delete a bucket, anyone can reuse its name for a new bucket.
The time it takes a deleted bucket's name to become available again is typically on the order of seconds; however, if you delete the project that contains the bucket, which effectively deletes the bucket as well, the bucket name may not be released for weeks or longer.
You can use a bucket name in a DNS record as part of a
CNAME
orA
redirect.In order to do so, your bucket name should conform to standard DNS naming conventions. This means that your bucket name should not use underscores (
_
) or have a period next to another period or dash. For example, ".." is not valid within DNS names and neither is "-." or ".-".
See also the Naming Best Practices section, which includes recommendations about excluding proprietary information from bucket names.
Example bucket names
The following are examples of valid bucket names:
my-travel-maps
0f75d593-8e7b-4418-a5ba-cb2970f0b91e
test.example.com
(Requires verification of ownership forexample.com
)
The following are examples of invalid bucket names:
My-Travel-Maps
(contains uppercase letters)my_google_bucket
(contains "google")test bucket
(contains a space)