Google Service Account Secret in Github OR Google Secrets Manager Won't Parse

Question

I am building an expo app and at this point I have a yml file for my pipeline which builds eas successfully, but upon submission, I get an error of eas submit seeing my pub/priv key which is part of the Google Service Account json secret. This is a github repository secret.

[logs] /usr/lib/ruby/3.0.0/openssl/pkey.rb:348:in 'initialize': [!] Neither PUB key nor PRIV key: unsupported (OpenSSL::PKey::RSAError)

I am adding the service account json data into the github secret as following the guidelines using gemini and chatGPT's suggestions. I have tried both as-is (as google gives it to me in the json to download copy paste) and I have tried removing white space as well and no luck. I get this error every time.

Ever since using google-github-actions/auth@v2 to look for the path of my google secret now I get this error:

Run google-github-actions/auth@v2 with: credentials_json: *** create_credentials_file: true export_environment_variables: true universe: googleapis.com cleanup_credentials: true access_token_lifetime: 3600s access_token_scopes: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform id_token_include_email: false Error: google-github-actions/auth failed with: failed to parse service account key JSON credentials: unexpected token '�', "��#y�l�_;�"... is not valid JSON

I have no clue why it thinks there are these random tokens (this occurs with json file or copy paste of the EXACT data google gives me and without white space.

Does anyone have any clue what I can try next?

Upon speaking with Gemini it wants me to use Google Secret Manager for security purposes. I have tried using this with the same copy/paste approach as is, the no white space, and EVEN the upload of the actual json file instead of text. This is the 3rd service account key I have tried thinking it was corrupt or something but I do not believe that is the issue. That is when I get the parsing error for secret from secret manager.