Properties are settings that govern the behavior of the gcloud CLI.

You can use properties to define a per-product or per-service setting such as
the account used by the gcloud CLI for authorization, the default
region to use when working with Compute Engine resources, or the option to
turn off automatic gcloud CLI component update checks. Properties
can also be used to define gcloud CLI preferences like verbosity
level and prompt configuration for gcloud CLI commands.

## Properties and flags

The gcloud CLI supports some
[global flags](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference.md.txt) and command flags that have the same
effect as gcloud CLI properties. For example, the gcloud CLI supports both
the `--project` flag and `project` property. Properties allow you to maintain
the same settings across command executions while flags affect command behavior
on a per-invocation basis. Note that flags override properties when both
are set.

## Configurations

A [configuration](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/configurations.md.txt) is a named set of
gcloud CLI properties. The gcloud CLI uses a
configuration named `default` as the initial active configuration. The `default`
configuration is suitable for most use cases. However, you can also
create additional configurations and switch between them as required.

## Listing properties

To list the properties in the active
[configuration](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/configurations.md.txt), run
[`gcloud config list`](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/config/list.md.txt):

    gcloud config list

The gcloud CLI returns the list of properties:

```sh
[compute]
region = us-east1
zone = us-east1-d
[core]
account = user@google.com
disable_usage_reporting = False
project = example-project
[metrics]
command_name = gcloud.config.list
```

## Setting properties

To set a property in the active configuration, run
[`gcloud config set`](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/config/set.md.txt). The following example
sets the [`project`](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference.md.txt#--project)
property, where <var translate="no">PROJECT_ID</var> is the unique ID for your project.

    gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID

To set properties that are not in the [`core`](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/properties.md.txt#core)
properties section, you must specify the section followed by a forward slash
before the property name. The following example sets the zone name to
`us-east1-b`.

    gcloud config set compute/zone us-east1-b

## Setting properties using environment variables

You can also set properties using environment variables. Each property has a
corresponding environment variable that can be used to set it. The name of the
environment variable follows the `CLOUDSDK_SECTION_NAME_PROPERTY_NAME` pattern.
For example, you can set the `core/project` and `compute/zone` properties as
follows:

    CLOUDSDK_CORE_PROJECT=PROJECT_NAME

    CLOUDSDK_COMPUTE_ZONE=ZONE_NAME

> [!NOTE]
> **Note:** The environment variable values take precedence over property values set using [`gcloud config set`](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/config/set.md.txt).

## Unsetting properties

To unset a property in the active configuration, use
[`gcloud config unset`](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/config/unset.md.txt):

    gcloud config unset disable_usage_reporting

## Available Properties

The list of all properties can be found by running
[`gcloud topic configurations`](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/topic/configurations.md.txt)
or [`gcloud config set --help`](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/config/set.md.txt) and looking
for the Available Properties section.

## What's next

- Read [gcloud CLI configurations](https://docs.cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/configurations.md.txt) to learn more about configurations.