How to generate Google API keys

Guide and OAuth helper to generate keys for Chrome Extensions upload

Companion to Chrome Web Store Upload to publish extensions.

You can follow this complete guide or the official-but-partial one at: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/using-api

Tip

The names you enter here don't really matter. It's an app that only you will have access to. This will take approximately 10 minutes and Google likes to change these screens often. Sorry.

1. Visit https://console.developers.google.com/apis/credentials

2. Create a project:

   

3. Enter chrome-webstore-upload and Create

4. Visit https://console.cloud.google.com/auth/overview

5. Click Get started

   

6. Enter the Application name (e.g. chrome-webstore-upload) and required email field

   

7. Select Internal

   

8. Fill in any required fields until Create becomes available

9. Click Create OAuth client

   

10. Select Desktop app, enter Chrome Webstore Upload as the name and click Create

    

11. Save your ✅ CLIENT_ID

    

12. Open the "Chrome Webstore Upload" client on screen

    

13. Click the Info button in the top right

    

14. Save your ✅ CLIENT_SECRET

    

15. Visit https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/chromewebstore.googleapis.com

16. Click Enable

    

17. Run this CLI tool to generate the required refreshToken

    npx chrome-webstore-upload-keys

    or

    bunx chrome-webstore-upload-keys

    

18. Done. Now you should have ✅ CLIENT_ID, ✅ CLIENT_SECRET and ✅ REFRESH_TOKEN. You can use these for all your extensions, but don't share them!

What the CLI tool does

1. Prompts you for the two keys you just generated
2. Opens a local server to handle the OAuth redirect from Google's servers with an approvalCode
3. Uses Google's oauth2 API to request a refreshToken