Set up your Earth Engine enabled Cloud Project

This guide helps you get your Cloud Project set up for use with Earth Engine. To make Earth Engine calls with a Google Cloud Project, you will need to have a Google account, have a Google Cloud Project and enable the Earth Engine API for that project. You need a Cloud Project enabled with Earth Engine to:

  • Use a service account for authentication.
  • Use the REST API.
  • Use a Client ID to identify your app and pass user credentials.
  • Create an App Engine app that uses Earth Engine.

Get access to Earth Engine

To use Earth Engine you will need a Cloud project that is registered for non-commercial or commercial use. See the Earth Engine pages on non-commercial and commercial use for more information.

The registration pages will guide you through creating a Cloud project and setting up commercial or non-commercial use. They will also enable the Earth Engine API automatically. The following sections provide more detailed setup instructions.

Create a Cloud project

If you haven't already, create a Google Cloud Project. You can do so from the projects page of the Cloud Console or click the following button:

Create a Cloud project

You can manage your Google Cloud projects from the Google Cloud Console.

Enable the Earth Engine API

To enable the Earth Engine API for your project, click the following button to go to the Earth Engine API page:

Enable the Earth Engine API

On the Earth Engine API page, ensure that you have selected your project, and click ENABLE.

You can manage your APIs for a Cloud project from the APIs & Services page of the Google Cloud Console.

Create an assets folder (optional)

You can create an Earth Engine assets folder associated with a Cloud Project to which you have access using the earthengine create folder command using a path as described here. For example:

earthengine create folder projects/my-ee-enabled-project-id/assets/

Note that you do not need to create this folder unless you plan to store assets in the project. If the project was created or selected through the Code Editor, the folder should already exist.

Create and register a service account (optional)

You may need to create a service account from your project, for example to create an app that authenticates to Earth Engine on behalf of users. Follow the instructions on this page to create, register and test a service account for use with Earth Engine.

If the service account is to make computations using the REST API, you also need to give it project level permission, specifically the Earth Engine Resource Viewer role. Depending on your project configuration, you may also need to give the service account the Service Usage Consumer role. See this page for more information about project permissions required to use Earth Engine.

Create OAuth 2.0 Client ID (optional)

You may need to create an OAuth 2.0 Client ID from the project, for example to create an app that passes user credentials to Earth Engine. You can manage credentials for your Cloud project by going to the Cloud Console menu () and selecting APIs & Services > Credentials. (Choose the project if prompted).

To create a new Client ID for the project, click + CREATE CREDENTIALS > OAuth client ID > Web application.

In the configuration of the web application:

  • Specify authorized JavaScript origins, for example:
    http://localhost:8080
    https://foo-ee-project.appspot.com
    
  • Specify authorized redirect URIs, for example:
    http://localhost:8080/oauth2callback
    https://foo-ee-project.appspot.com/oauth2callback
    

Learn more about authenticating users with OAuth.