Unless otherwise configured, the client libraries use Application Default Credentials to authenticate with Google Cloud Services. While this works for most applications, in some cases you may need to override this default. You can do so by providing the UnifiedCredentialsOption The following example shows how to explicitly load a service account key file:
[](std::string const& keyfile) {
auto is = std::ifstream(keyfile);
is.exceptions(std::ios::badbit); // Minimal error handling in examples
auto contents = std::string(std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(is.rdbuf()), {});
auto options =
google::cloud::Options{}.set<google::cloud::UnifiedCredentialsOption>(
google::cloud::MakeServiceAccountCredentials(contents));
return google::cloud::notebooks_v1::ManagedNotebookServiceClient(
google::cloud::notebooks_v1::MakeManagedNotebookServiceConnection(
options));
}
Follow these links to find examples for other *Client classes:
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eThis page provides documentation for overriding default authentication credentials when using Google Cloud client libraries, with version-specific information available.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe latest release candidate is version 2.37.0-rc, and there are many previous versions, starting from 2.36.0 going all the way down to 2.11.0.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe example on the page shows how to override the default credentials by loading a service account key file via \u003ccode\u003eUnifiedCredentialsOption\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eExamples for overriding credentials are provided for \u003ccode\u003enotebooks_v1::ManagedNotebookServiceClient\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003enotebooks_v1::NotebookServiceClient\u003c/code\u003e, and \u003ccode\u003enotebooks_v2::NotebookServiceClient\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eFor additional details and best practices for managing service account keys, a link to the official Google Cloud guide is included.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]