🔐 Authentication

One-time OAuth 2.0 setup — log in through the browser and store a token locally.

Every command needs an authenticated pCloud session. pcloud login runs a browser-based OAuth 2.0 flow once and stores the resulting token locally; after that, commands just work.

🛠️ Create an OAuth application

You need a pCloud OAuth application to obtain a client ID and secret. Create one from the pCloud OAuth 2.0 documentation, then expose the credentials in your shell or a .env file:

export PCLOUD_CLIENT_ID=your_client_id
export PCLOUD_CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret

🔑 Log in

pcloud login

This opens your browser to the pCloud authorisation page. After you approve access, pCloud redirects back to a local callback server and the token is saved to ~/.config/pcloud/tokens.json (mode 0600). The CLI never sees your pCloud password.

Once logged in, confirm the session:

pcloud whoami

This prints the account email, plan, and quota usage.

🚪 Log out

Remove the stored credentials at any time:

pcloud logout

🤖 Bypassing the credential store

For CI or scripted contexts, set PCLOUD_ACCESS_TOKEN directly. When present, no stored credentials are read or written and login / logout are unnecessary:

export PCLOUD_ACCESS_TOKEN=your_access_token
pcloud ls /

🌍 Choosing a region

The CLI targets the EU API (eapi.pcloud.com) by default. If your account lives on the US infrastructure, set:

export PCLOUD_REGION=us