gcloud

gcloud is the primary command-line tool for Google Cloud. It is pre-installed in Cloud Shell and supports tab completion for commands, subcommands, and flag values.

Common commands

# List active account
gcloud auth list
 
# Show project configuration
gcloud config list project
 
# Show compute zone and region defaults
gcloud config get-value compute/zone
gcloud config get-value compute/region
 
# Describe project details
gcloud compute project-info describe --project <PROJECT_ID>
 
# Create a VM instance
gcloud compute instances create <NAME> --machine-type n1-standard-2 --zone <ZONE>

Interactive mode

gcloud beta interactive enables auto-completing prompts with inline help snippets shown at the bottom of the terminal as you type.

Useful flags

• --help or -h — show help for any command
• --format — control output format (e.g., json, yaml, table)
• --project — specify a project ID explicitly
• --zone / --region — override default location