When logging into Gemini CLI with a personal Google account can fail with this error:
Failed to login. Message: This account requires setting the GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT or GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT_ID env var.
This is confusing at first, because the official documentation says that individual Google accounts do not require a Google Cloud Project — with exceptions.
In practice, one of those exceptions is that the Gemini CLI still checks for the presence of the following environment variables during OAuth-Personal login.
Fix
Set dummy values and retry login:
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT="no-project-required"
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT_ID="no-project-required"
That’s it — login works.