Creating an OAuth Client ID

Overview

This document will take you through the steps needed to set up a Google Cloud project and create an OAuth client ID for gphoto-sync.

For a discussion of the purpose of this ID see Google OAuth Tokens for gphotos-sync.

Each step here assumes that you’re logged into a personal Google account.

Note

The steps outlined here are correct as of May 2022. Their is quite a bit of churn in the Google Cloud Console UI so the screens may change a bit.

Create a Google Cloud Project

1. Head to https://console.cloud.google.com

   • If you have not set up Google Cloud before, select your country and agree the to the Terms of Service.

   

2. In the top banner the currently selected project is shown. If you have no previous projects this will say ‘Select a project’

   • Click on the current project name or ‘Select a project’

   • This will bring up the ‘Select a Project’ dialog

   

3. Press New Project.

4. Enter a project name. For example, “gphotos”. This name must be unique within your account and cannot be changed in the future.

5. Leave Location as the default “No Organization”.

6. Press Create.

   

Enable the Photos API

1. Ensure that the project you made above is the active project.

2. Click on the top-left hamburger menu and find APIs & Services > Library.

   

3. Search for the Photos Library API by Google and select it.

   

4. Enable it.

   

Configure OAuth Consent

1. Find APIs & Services > OAuth consent screen

   

2. Set User Type to External.

3. Press Create

   

4. App Registration - OAuth consent screen:

   1. Set your App Name. For example, “gphotos”. Note that this does not have to be the same as the project name. Do not include “Google” in the name or this will fail.

   2. Enter your email address as the User support email.

   3. Enter your email address as the Developer contact information.

   4. Leave all other fields.

   5. Press Save and Continue.

   

5. App Registration - Scopes

   1. Nothing is needed here - you can just ignore everything and press Save and Continue.

   

6. App Registration - Test Users:

   1. Nothing needed here as you are going to publish the project. This means it will no longer be in the testing state.

   2. Press Save and Continue.

   

7. Summary

   1. You will now see a summary screen like this

   2. Review the summary and press Back to Dashboard.

   

Create the OAuth Credentials

1. Find APIs & Services > Credentials

2. Press + Create Credentials and select OAuth client ID.

   

3. Choose Desktop App

   1. Choose name for your credentials e.g. gphotos

   2. Click Create

   

4. Click Download JSON to download the OAuth client ID as JSON and save it as client_secret.json.

   

Publish the App

Important

Failure to publish the app will result in your auth token expiring after 7 days. See the Google Cloud docs and Issue #290 for details.

1. Head to APIs & Services > OAuth consent screen

2. Press Publish App.

3. Read the notice and press Confirm.

At this point you should be able to run gphotos-sync using the instructions found in the README.

Move client_secret.json

1. The client_secret.json must be moved to the correct location

2. Each supported operating system has a different location where it will look for this file.

3. Return the Initial Setup for details of where to put this file.