Couldn’t connect with these settings self-signed certificate in certificate chain

[mahe]

I m running n8n on my own laptop

Describe the problem/error/question

the problem is i am trying to connect google chat model, while filling the credentials i am getting this error.

What is the error message (if any)?

Couldn’t connect with these settings

self-signed certificate in certificate chain

Please share your workflow

Share the output returned by the last node

Error running node ‘Google Gemini Chat Model’

Information on your n8n setup

• n8n version: don’t know i used docker to pull the image n8n/n8n.io something like that
• Database (default: SQLite):simple memory
• n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):don’t know
• Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app):docker desktop
• Operating system:windows

[jabbson]

Could you show a screenshot an the error?
Are there any proxies in your network/setup?

[mahe]

[Dhruv29]

@mahe
Generate API key from another google account and test it so new key is work, problem in key.

Also test this key with gemini cURLs:

curl “https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemini-2.5-flash:generateContent” \
-H “x-goog-api-key: $GEMINI_API_KEY” \
-H ‘Content-Type: application/json’ \
-X POST \
-d ‘{
“contents”: [
{
“parts”: [
{
“text”: “Explain how AI works in a few words”
}
]
}
]
“generationConfig”: {
“thinkingConfig”: {
“thinkingBudget”: 0
}
}
}’

curl “https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemini-2.5-flash:generateContent”
-H “x-goog-api-key: $GEMINI_API_KEY”
-H ‘Content-Type: application/json’
-X POST
-d ‘{
“contents”: [
{
“parts”: [
{
“text”: “Explain how AI works in a few words”
}
]
}
]
}’

also import this curl in HTTP request node in n8n.

[Naufal_Fayyadh]

Hello mahe, welcome to the community!

I think that error means you Docker container cant validate Google’s TLS cert. Something on your machine/network (corp proxy, antivirus SSL inspection, self-signed CA) is man in the middling HTTPS, so Node.js inside the n8n container rejects the chain.

There are several suggestion that you can try:

1. Export to your root CA as PEM (e.g. corp-root.pem) and mount it and point Node to it on docker-compose.yml.

services:
  n8n:
    image: n8nio/n8n:latest
    environment:
      - NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS=/certs/corp-root.pem
      # optional: bypass the UI credential test only
      - N8N_SKIP_CREDENTIAL_TEST=true
    volumes:
      - ./certs/corp-root.pem:/certs/corp-root.pem:ro
    ports:
      - "5678:5678"

The you can try to docker compose up -d, and retry the Gemini credential

2. Add exception for generativelanguage.googleapis.com and (*.googleapis.com) in your proxy/AV and then restart the container.

Maybe thats all i can share, hope this will be works for you!

[jabbson]

Thank you for replying.

Were you able to check if your setup is behind a proxy? Did you use a regular image for this setup or did you build your own?