Enabling accessibility features
In order to provide a more streamlined screen reader experience, the gcloud
command-line tool comes with an accessibility/screen_reader property.
When this property is set to true, the following behaviour is enabled:
- Status trackers instead of unicode spinners: The phrase
'working' is displayed on stderr while gcloud is
performing tasks.
- Percentage progress bars: Progress is displayed as a
percentage, outputted to stderr.
- Flattened tables: Boxed tables are the default output of many list
commands. Instead of the queried resources being displayed in tables
drawn in Unicode, results are rendered as a flattened list of items.
Also, consider using the
--format flag to define your own format.
To enable these accessibility features, run:
gcloud config set accessibility/screen_reader true
Additional resources
Alternate documentation experiences
- To search the gcloud CLI reference docs for a keyword or command, use
gcloud help. This runs a search for all
commands with help text matching the given argument or arguments.
Refining gcloud CLI output
- To adjust the verbosity level of a command, you can set the
gcloud CLI flag
--verbosity with either debug, info,
warning, error, critical, or none.
- For list commands, you can further refine your output by using the
--limit
flag to set a maximum number of resources to list. You can also use the
--page-size flag to define the number of resources per page if the service
lists output in pages. To sort, use the --sort-by flag with the relevant
field to sort.
- To disable interactive prompting, use the
--quiet flag.
- To structure and produce more meaningful output, you can use the
format, filter and projection flags to fine-tune your output.
- If you'd like to define just the format of your output, use the
--format flag to produce a tabulated
or flattened version of your output (for interactive display) or a
machine-readable version of the output (json, csv, yaml, value).
- To format a list of keys that select resource data values,
use projections.
- To further refine your output to a criteria you'd like to define,
use the
--filter flag.
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Last updated 2025-08-28 UTC.
[[["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 2025-08-28 UTC."],[],[],null,["# Enabling accessibility features\n\nIn order to provide a more streamlined screen reader experience, the gcloud\ncommand-line tool comes with an `accessibility/screen_reader` property.\nWhen this property is set to true, the following behaviour is enabled:\n\n- **Status trackers instead of unicode spinners:** The phrase 'working' is displayed on stderr while gcloud is performing tasks.\n- **Percentage progress bars:** Progress is displayed as a percentage, outputted to stderr.\n- **Flattened tables** : Boxed tables are the default output of many list commands. Instead of the queried resources being displayed in tables drawn in Unicode, results are rendered as a flattened list of items. Also, consider using the `--format` flag to define your own format.\n\nTo enable these accessibility features, run: \n\n gcloud config set accessibility/screen_reader true\n\nAdditional resources\n--------------------\n\n### Alternate documentation experiences\n\n- To search the gcloud CLI reference docs for a keyword or command, use [`gcloud help`](/sdk/gcloud/reference/help). This runs a search for all commands with help text matching the given argument or arguments.\n\n### Refining gcloud CLI output\n\n- To adjust the verbosity level of a command, you can set the gcloud CLI flag `--verbosity` with either debug, info, warning, error, critical, or none.\n- For list commands, you can further refine your output by using the `--limit` flag to set a maximum number of resources to list. You can also use the `--page-size` flag to define the number of resources per page if the service lists output in pages. To sort, use the `--sort-by` flag with the relevant field to sort.\n- To disable interactive prompting, use the [`--quiet`](/sdk/gcloud/reference#--quiet) flag.\n- To structure and produce more meaningful output, you can use the format, filter and projection flags to fine-tune your output.\n - If you'd like to define just the format of your output, use the [`--format`](/sdk/gcloud/reference/topic/formats) flag to produce a tabulated or flattened version of your output (for interactive display) or a machine-readable version of the output (json, csv, yaml, value).\n - To format a list of keys that select resource data values, use [projections](/sdk/gcloud/reference/topic/projections).\n - To further refine your output to a criteria you'd like to define, use the [`--filter`](/sdk/gcloud/reference/topic/filters) flag.\n\nFiling feedback\n---------------\n\nTo file a bug, provide feedback, or send suggestions, use `gcloud feedback` to\nhelp improve the gcloud CLI experience. This command will\nopen the public issue tracker in a browser window.\n\nYou can also directly log issues using\n[issue tracker](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=187143).\nBe sure to toggle the 'Type' field to reflect the nature of the issue you're\nfiling (Bug, Feature Request, etc.) to help make responses more efficient."]]
