Use Azure Managed Identity locally during development

One credential, everywhere

DefaultAzureCredential from the Azure Identity SDK checks multiple sources in order: environment variables, managed identity, Azure CLI, and more.

In your code:

Program.cs

var credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();
var client = new BlobServiceClient(
    new Uri("https://mystorage.blob.core.windows.net"),
    credential);

Locally it will use your az login session. In production it picks up the managed identity automatically.

Make sure you’re logged in:

az_login.sh

az login
az account set --subscription "my-sub"

Tip: Set AZURE_TENANT_ID environment variable if you have access to multiple tenants, so it doesn’t pick the wrong one.