How can I configure a persistent credentials file in Cloud Shell instead of using a temporary file?

The behavior you’re seeing is because the presence of the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS forces the SDK to generate and use credentials from a temporary location rather than the default one in your ~/.config/gcloud directory. This typically happens when an incorrect or non-existent path (like a misspelled folder) was previously set, so gcloud falls back to creating credentials in a temporary folder.

Here’s how to fix it:

1. Unset the Environment Variable
   Remove GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS in your current session so that gcloud will use its default internal path. You can do this by running:

   BASHCopied
   unset GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS

   This tells gcloud not to override its default behavior with an incorrect path.

2. Re-run Application Default Login
   Once the variable is unset, execute the command again:

   BASHCopied
   gcloud auth application-default login

   This time, the credentials should be stored in the default location (typically under ~/.config/gcloud/).

3. (Optional) Set Your Desired Location
   If you really need to use a specific persistent file path (for example, to be referenced in Terraform), you can move or copy the generated credentials to your desired folder and then set the environment variable manually to that correct path. For instance:

   BASHCopied
   cp ~/.config/gcloud/application_default_credentials.json /path/to/your/folder/credentials.json
   export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/your/folder/credentials.json

   Note: Be cautious with this approach because the default behavior that uses the temporary file is intentional for security reasons. If you choose to store the credentials in a persistent location, make sure that the file is protected with proper permissions.

By unsetting the incorrect environment variable and re-running the login, you reset the configuration and allow gcloud to store the credentials in the expected, persistent location.