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Enable virtual displays on a VM | Compute Engine Documentation

Enable virtual displays on a VM

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Linux Windows

This document describes how to enable or disable virtual displays on a virtual machine (VM) instance.

If an application running on your VM requires a display device, but you don't need the performance of a GPU, then configure your VM to use virtual display devices. By enabling virtual displays on a VM, you can run virtual display devices on the VM, such as remote system management tools, remote desktop software, and screen capturing.

Before you begin Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM, ask your administrator to grant you the Compute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1) IAM role on the project. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

This predefined role contains the permissions required to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to enable or disable virtual displays on a VM:

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Pricing

There are no costs associated with enabling or disabling virtual displays on a VM.

Restrictions

For VMs with virtual displays enabled, the following limitations apply:

Enable virtual displays on a VM

To enable virtual displays on a VM, select one of the following methods described in this document:

If your VM is running an x64-based Windows OS image earlier than version v20190312, then, after you enable virtual displays on the VM, install the virtual display driver as described in this document.

Create a VM with virtual displays enabled

To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, select one of the following options:

Console
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create an instance page.

    Go to Create an instance

  2. Specify the properties for the VM, including the name, zone, and machine type.

  3. In the Display device section, select the Enable display device checkbox.

  4. To create the VM, click Create.

gcloud

To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, use the gcloud compute instances create command with the --enable-display-device flag.

gcloud compute instances create VM_NAME \
    --enable-display-device \
    --machine-type=MACHINE_TYPE \
    --zone=ZONE

Replace the following:

Terraform

To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, use the Terraform resource with the enable_display argument set to true.

For example, to create a VM in zone us-central1-c with virtual displays enabled, and specify f1-micro as the machine type, use the following resource:

REST

To create a VM with virtual displays enabled, make a POST request to the instances.insert method. In the request body, include the enableDisplay field set to true.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances

{
  "name": "VM_NAME",
  "machineType": "zones/ZONE/machineTypes/MACHINE_TYPE",
  "disks": [
    {
      "boot": true,
      "initializeParams": {
        "sourceImage": "project/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/IMAGE"
      }
    }
  ],
  "displayDevice": {
    "enableDisplay": true
  },
  "networkInterfaces": [
    {
      "network": "global/networks/default"
    }
  ]
}

Replace the following:

For more information about creating a VM, see Create and start a Compute Engine instance.

Enable virtual displays on an existing VM

Before enabling virtual displays on a VM, make sure to stop the VM.

To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, select one of the following options:

Console
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to the VM instances page

  2. In the Name column, click the name of the VM.

    The details page of the VM opens.

  3. Click edit Edit.

    The page to edit the VM's properties opens.

  4. In the Display device section, select the Enable display device checkbox.

  5. Click Save.

gcloud

To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, use the gcloud compute instances update command with the --enable-display-device flag.

gcloud compute instances update VM_NAME \
    --enable-display-device \
    --zone=ZONE

Replace the following:

REST

To enable virtual displays on an existing VM, make a POST request to the instances.updateDisplayDevice method. In the request body, include the enableDisplay field and set it to true.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/VM_NAME/updateDisplayDevice

{
  "enableDisplay": true
}

Replace the following:

Disable virtual displays on an existing VM

Before disabling virtual displays on a VM, make sure to stop the VM.

To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, select one of the following options:

Console
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to the VM instances page

  2. In the Name column, click the name of the VM.

    The details page of the VM opens.

  3. Click edit Edit.

    The page to edit the VM's properties opens.

  4. In the Display device section, clear the Enable display device checkbox.

  5. Click Save.

gcloud

To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, use the gcloud compute instances update command with the --no-enable-display-device flag.

gcloud compute instances update VM_NAME \
    --no-enable-display-device \
    --zone=ZONE

Replace the following:

REST

To disable virtual displays on an existing VM, make a POST request to the instances.updateDisplayDevice method. In the request body, include the enableDisplay field and set it to false.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances/VM_NAME/updateDisplayDevice

{
  "enableDisplay": false
}

Replace the following:

Install the virtual display driver

If you've enabled virtual displays on a Windows VM that runs a Windows OS image earlier than version v20190312, then, to use a virtual display device on the VM, you must install the virtual display driver provided by Google Cloud. If the VM runs a more recent OS image version, then the driver is already installed and you can skip this section.

To install the virtual display driver on a VM with virtual displays enabled, do the following:

  1. Connect to the Windows VM.

  2. Open a PowerShell terminal as an administrator.

  3. Install the google-compute-engine-driver-gga component:

    googet install google-compute-engine-driver-gga
    
  4. Restart the VM.

After you restart the VM, you can verify that the driver was correctly installed as described in the next section.

Verify the virtual display driver installation

If you had to manually install the virtual display driver on a Windows VM as described in the previous section, then you can verify that the installation was successful by doing the following:

  1. If you haven't already, connect to the Windows VM.

  2. Open Device Manager.

  3. In the Device Manager list, in the Display adapters list, make sure that the Google Graphics Array (GGA) driver is listed.

    If the driver isn't listed, then reinstall the virtual display driver as described in this document.

What's next

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC.

[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC."],[[["This document provides instructions on how to enable or disable virtual display devices on a virtual machine (VM) instance for applications that require a display but don't need GPU performance."],["Virtual displays can be enabled when creating a new VM or added to an existing VM through the Google Cloud console, gcloud command-line tool, Terraform, or REST API."],["There are no direct costs for enabling or disabling virtual displays, but there are limitations, such as incompatibility with Sandy Bridge CPU platforms and T2A Arm VMs."],["For x64-based Windows VMs with OS images earlier than version `v20190312`, a manual installation of the virtual display driver is required after enabling virtual displays, with verification steps provided."],["To either enable or disable the virtual display, the VM will need to be stopped first."]]],[]]


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