Guides
Reaching private Compute Engine VMs from macOS through Google's Identity-Aware Proxy: what each connection needs, the manual route, and the one-click route in Ostgate.
IAP Desktop for Mac
Google's IAP Desktop is Windows-only. What Mac users do instead, and how Ostgate compares feature by feature.
SSH to a Compute Engine VM without a public IP from a Mac
IAP TCP forwarding for SSH: the firewall rule, IAM roles and keys, with gcloud, a bastion or Ostgate.
RDP to a Windows VM on Google Cloud from a Mac
Get a Windows password, open port 3389 through IAP and connect with an embedded Remote Desktop.
Port forwarding to a GCP VM over IAP from a Mac
PostgreSQL, Redis or a web UI on a VM with no external IP, on localhost: a direct IAP tunnel or an SSH local forward.
RDP errors on Compute Engine Windows VMs
Error 0x4 and 0x204, no Remote Desktop license servers, a rejected password, NLA: the cause and the fix for each.
VS Code Remote-SSH to a GCP VM through IAP on a Mac
An IAP ProxyCommand for Remote-SSH, the Dock PATH and timeout traps, and a VM that cannot download the VS Code server.
scp and rsync to a GCP VM without an external IP
gcloud compute scp, plain scp and rsync through an IAP ProxyCommand, an SFTP browser, and measured transfer times.
Connect to Cloud SQL on a private IP from a Mac
Why a private IP is unreachable from a laptop, and how to reach it through a VM in the VPC over IAP.
DBeaver, DataGrip or TablePlus to a Cloud SQL private IP
Why the client's SSH tunnel cannot reach a private VM, the connection fields, and SSL mode through a local port.
Reach a GCP internal load balancer from a Mac through IAP
An internal Application Load Balancer, a private IP or an internal Cloud Run service, through a bastion VM, with host names and TLS.
IAP TCP forwarding: firewall rule and IAM checklist
Everything a connection through Identity-Aware Proxy needs: 35.235.240.0/20, roles and ports.
IAP tunnel slow or disconnecting on a Mac
Idle timeouts, sleep and network changes, reauthentication and slow gcloud tunnels: the cause and the fix for each.
IAP tunnel error codes explained
What 4003, 4033 and the other IAP relay close codes mean, and how to fix each one.