Run the login command.

az login
If the CLI can open your default browser, it initiates authorization code flow and open the default browser to load an Azure sign-in page.
Otherwise, it initiates the device code flow and tell you to open a browser page at https://aka.ms/devicelogin and enter the code displayed in your terminal.
If no web browser is available or the web browser fails to open, you may force device code flow with az login --use-device-code.
Sign in with your account credentials in the browser.
After logging in, you see a list of subscriptions associated with your Azure account. The subscription information with isDefault: true is the currently activated subscription after logging in. To select another subscription, use the az account set command with the subscription ID to switch to. For more information about subscription selection, see Use multiple Azure subscriptions.
There are ways to sign in non-interactively, which are covered in detail in Sign in with Azure CLI.
Common Azure CLI commands
This table lists some common commands used in the CLI and links to their reference documentation.
Resource type
Azure CLI command group
Finding commands
Azure CLI commands are organized as commands of groups. Each group represents an Azure service, and commands operate on that service.
To search for commands, use az find. For example, to search for command names containing secret,
use the following command:
az find secret
Use the --help argument to get a complete list of commands and subgroups of a group. For example, to find the CLI commands for working with
Network Security Groups (NSGs):
az network nsg --help
The CLI has full tab completion for commands under the bash shell.
Globally available arguments
There are some arguments that are available for every command.
--help prints CLI reference information about commands and their arguments and lists available subgroups and
commands.
--output changes the output format. The available output formats are json, jsonc (colorized JSON), tsv (Tab-Separated
Values), table (human-readable ASCII tables), and yaml. By default the CLI outputs json. To learn more about the available
output formats, see Output formats for Azure CLI.
--query uses the JMESPath query language to filter the output returned from Azure services. To learn more about queries, see Query command results with Azure CLI and the JMESPath tutorial.
--verbose prints information about resources created in Azure during an operation, and other useful information.
--debug prints even more information about CLI operations, used for debugging purposes. If you find a bug, provide output generated with the --debug flag on when submitting a bug report.
Interactive mode
The CLI offers an interactive mode that automatically displays help information and makes it easier to
select subcommands. You enter interactive mode with the az interactive command.
az interactive
For more information on interactive mode, see Azure CLI Interactive Mode.
There's also a Visual Studio Code plugin that
offers an interactive experience, including autocomplete and mouse-over documentation.
Learn CLI basics with quickstarts and tutorials
To learn how to use the Azure CLI, try an in-depth tutorial for setting up virtual machines and using the power
of the CLI to query Azure resources.
Create virtual machines with the Azure CLI tutorial
There are also Quickstarts for other popular services.
Create a storage account using the Azure CLI
Transfer objects to/from Azure Blob storage using the CLI
Create a single Azure SQL database using the Azure CLI
Create an Azure Database for MySQL server using the Azure CLI
Create an Azure Database for PostgreSQL using the Azure CLI
Create a Python web app in Azure
Run a custom Docker Hub image in Azure Web Apps for Containers
Give feedback
We welcome your feedback for the CLI to help us make improvements and resolve bugs. You can file an issue on GitHub or use the built-in
features of the CLI to leave general feedback with the az feedback command.
az feedback
See also
Onboarding cheat sheet
Learn to use Bash with the Azure CLI
Full command reference list for the Azure CLI