S3-compatible storage

S3-compatible storage is listed in Add Account as Bucket Storage. You connect it with an access key, a secret key and the name of one bucket, rather than by signing in through a browser. Amazon S3 is the best-known example, and many other services and self-hosted servers speak the same language.

Adding a bucket

1. Choose Connect Accounts… from the More menu, then click Add Account.
2. Select Bucket Storage and type a Nickname, such as archive-bucket.
3. Pick your Provider. There are presets for Amazon Web Services, several other S3-compatible services, a self-hosted server, and Other (custom endpoint) for anything else.
4. Fill in the fields below and click Save account.

Under Advanced — addressing + transfer behaviour there's Use path-style URLs. It's switched on for the self-hosted and custom presets and off for Amazon Web Services. Turn it on if your server doesn't support the other addressing style.

You can add up to 10 Bucket Storage accounts.

%% caption: The checks Storage Studio makes when you save an S3 account
flowchart TD
  A[You click Save account] --> B{Is the bucket name filled in?}
  B -->|No| X[Save stays greyed out]
  B -->|Yes| C{Does the Region look like an Availability Zone ID?}
  C -->|Yes| Y[Storage Studio names the real region to use instead]
  C -->|No| D{Is it an S3 Express One Zone bucket?}
  D -->|Yes| Z[Refused: uploads to those buckets don't work]
  D -->|No| E[Account saved]

Why the bucket is required

S3 has no "default bucket": every file lives at bucket/name. Without a bucket, Storage Studio would have nothing to put first in the path, and every transfer would fail. If an older account was saved without one, selecting it shows Bucket not set — transfers will fail with an Edit bucket… button.

Common mistakes Storage Studio catches

• An Availability Zone ID in Region — something like use1-az2 is a zone, not a region. When you save, Storage Studio stops and, where it can, names the region it belongs to. On an existing account it shows This remote's region looks invalid with a Use region and retest button that fixes it in place.
• An S3 Express One Zone bucket — Storage Studio can list these but can't upload to them, so it won't save a bucket whose name marks it as one. An existing account pointed at one shows S3 Express One Zone — upload not supported. Use a standard bucket instead.
• A key that can only see one bucket — if your access policy only covers your bucket (a sensible set-up), Test connection can't list every bucket in the account. Storage Studio recognises this and reports Authenticated in green rather than an error.

Editing the account later

Select it in Remotes & Accounts and click Edit. Every field except the nickname can be changed. Your saved secret is filled in so you can check it — click the eye button to hide it before sharing your screen. Leave it as it is to keep it, or type a new one. See testing, editing and removing an account.

What you can do with it

Use the bucket in Data Transfers, show it in the Storage Studio location in Finder, or choose it as a backup destination.

See also: Cloud accounts · How your account sign-ins are stored · SFTP and FTP servers