How to get a Google Gemini API key
About ten minutes. You only do it once, and it is the same key for every game after that.
SnapToTackle does the cutting on your computer, but the part that watches the film — finding the snap and the whistle — runs on Google's Gemini. That means you need a key of your own so Google knows whose account to bill.
This is deliberate, and it is why the software is $199 a season rather than $1,500. You pay Google directly for what you actually use, at cost, about 50 cents a game. We never see that money and we never see your key.
Step 1 — Open AI Studio
Go to aistudio.google.com/api-keys and sign in with a Google account. Any Google account works, including a school one, but see the note about school accounts further down.
If it asks you to accept terms, that is normal — it is the developer terms for the API, separate from your ordinary Google account.
Step 2 — Create the key
Choose Create API key. Google creates a Cloud project for you automatically; you do not have to make one or choose one.
You will get a long string starting with AI. Copy it now
— Google shows it once and will not show it again. If you lose it, nothing
is broken: come back and make another, and delete the old one.
Step 3 — Turn on billing
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters most.
A key works without billing, on Google's free tier. Do not stop there. In AI Studio, open the billing settings for your key and link a billing account — a card, the same as any other Google service.
There are two reasons, and the second is the important one.
| Free tier | With billing on | |
|---|---|---|
| Your film used to improve Google's products | Yes | No |
| Rate limited partway through a game | Likely | No |
| What a game costs | — | ~$0.50 |
If you coach minors, read that first row again. On the free tier, the cropped frames of your players that go to Google may be used to improve Google's products. With billing on, Google's terms say they are not. Same key, same app, same film — one setting.
The rate limit matters too, just less. A full game is a dozen or so requests over about twenty minutes, and the free tier's ceiling is low enough that a long run can stall halfway. SnapToTackle will tell you if that happens rather than quietly returning a short breakdown, but it is a wasted evening.
Turning billing on does not charge you anything by itself. You pay for what you use, and for this app that is cents.
Step 4 — Put it in SnapToTackle
Open the app, go to Keys & models, paste the key next to Google Gemini and choose Save. The app checks it with Google before saving, so a bad paste fails immediately instead of forty minutes into a run.
It is written to a file called snaptotackle.key next to the
program, and it never leaves your computer. If you would rather use the
command line: SnapToTackle.exe --set-key.
What it actually costs
| Setting | A 60-minute game | A ten-game season |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (default) | ~$0.40 | ~$4 |
| Deeper pass | ~$1.05 | ~$10 |
If you want a ceiling on it, Google Cloud lets you set a budget alert on the project. Worth doing for peace of mind, though a season of film costs less than a bag of footballs.
When it goes wrong
"API key not valid" when I save it
Almost always a copy-paste problem: a missing character at one end, or a space. Copy it again from AI Studio. If it still fails, make a new key — it takes ten seconds and costs nothing.
It worked, then stopped partway through a game
That is the free tier's rate limit. Turn on billing as in step 3. Run the game again afterwards: the segments that finished are cached, so you only pay for the parts that did not.
My school Google account will not let me
School and district accounts are often locked down by an administrator, and API access is one of the things they switch off. You will usually see a message about your organisation's policy. The quickest fix is a personal Google account — the key is yours either way, and it keeps school billing out of it.
I think my key has leaked
Delete it in AI Studio and make a new one. That stops the old one working immediately. Then put the new one in the app. Nothing else needs doing and nothing you have already cut is affected.
Can I use one key on two computers?
Yes. The key is yours, not the machine's, and there is no per-device limit on Google's side. Your SnapToTackle licence is what limits how many computers you install on — that is separate, and it is in your account.
Still stuck?
Email [email protected] and tell us where it stopped. This is the fiddliest part of the whole thing and we would rather walk you through it than have you give up on it.