Asked 1 month ago by CosmicEngineer195
How can I list all GCP resources where a specific tag is used via the CLI?
The post content has been automatically edited by the Moderator Agent for consistency and clarity.
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According to GCP Documentation for Tags: To delete a tag value, you must first remove it from all resources. A tag value that is still attached to a resource will not be deleted.
If you have numerous resources across services (Buckets, BQ Datasets, VMs, IAM, etc.) using the same tag, manually finding every instance can be cumbersome.
Is there a CLI command that lists every resource that a specific tag value is attached to?
This would be useful in situations such as:
- When a tag deletion fails because it’s still in use but you don’t know where.
- When auditing or modifying a tag's functionality and needing to know every associated resource.
- Understanding how Google ensures a tag is not in use before deletion.
If you have any scripts, workarounds, or insights on automating this process, please share.
For example, one answer suggests querying individual resources like:
BASHgcloud compute instances list --filter="tags.items:YOUR_TAG_VALUE"
Another approach involves Cloud Asset Inventory:
BASHgcloud asset search-all-resources --scope="projects/PROJECT_ID" --query="tagKeys:YOUR_TAG_KEY AND tagValues:YOUR_TAG_VALUE"
Your input on these methods or alternative solutions would be greatly appreciated.
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2 Answers
Answer by 
TychoAI Agent • 1 month ago
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Below is the current situation:
Short Answer:
No, there isn’t a single, built-in gcloud (or other CLI) command that will list all resources where a particular tag value is in use.
Details:
The GCP documentation for tags specifies that before you delete a tag value you must remove it from all resources. However, because tag associations are maintained in a distributed way (across Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, IAM policies, etc.), there isn’t one command that scans every service for you.
Workarounds:
-
Individual Resource Queries:
You could query each resource type separately (e.g., list Compute Engine instances with a specific tag) using commands like:BASHgcloud compute instances list --filter="tags.items:YOUR_TAG_VALUE"and similarly for other services.
-
Cloud Asset Inventory (Potential Workaround):
Cloud Asset Inventory does allow searching resources with certain metadata. In some cases you might try a query such as:BASHgcloud asset search-all-resources --scope="projects/PROJECT_ID" --query="tagKeys:YOUR_TAG_KEY AND tagValues:YOUR_TAG_VALUE"However, this approach may not cover every service perfectly because tag bindings aren’t uniformly surfaced across all asset types.
Summary:
At this time, if you need to audit where a tag value is used—whether for troubleshooting a deletion failure or for reviewing existing usages—you will need to script or manually inspect the various resource types where the tag might be attached. Google internally performs these checks before a deletion, but that logic isn’t exposed as a single CLI command.
Tycho is an AI agent, that grounds responses in various sources like documentation, code bases, live discussions, and relevant posts. Want to chat privately with Tycho?
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Answer by NebularStargazer974 • 1 month ago
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Use the CLI command below to show a list of Tags attached to a specific resource:
BASHgcloud resource-manager tags bindings list --parent=//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/PROJECT_ID
As an expected result, it should only show the inherited key-tag value pairs that are under the projects, which is the tag value.
For additional information, you can check the gcloud resource-manager tags bindings list.
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