Find your way around S3Client

The main window has two browser panes side by side and an operations list below them. You choose what each pane shows: a folder on your computer or an S3 location.

For example, show your documents on the left and a bucket on the right to upload a file. You can also show two local folders or two S3 locations.

What are accounts, buckets and objects?#

• An account in S3Client holds the settings needed to access your storage service: credentials, the service address and a region. Creating an account in S3Client does not create an account with the provider. Manage your accounts in File > Accounts….
• A bucket is a storage container on the S3 service that holds your files. An account may give you access to several buckets. A bucket is not stored on your local disk.
• An S3 object is the file stored in a bucket, together with its name and properties. S3Client displays it as a file you can select and transfer.

The provider you choose when creating an account supplies its initial settings. The account’s capabilities tell S3Client which features the service supports. They do not grant permissions: your credentials must authorize the action. See account configuration to adjust these settings.

Choose what a pane shows#

The Root list at the top of each pane lets you choose a local drive, an account or a bucket. Disabled accounts are not offered.

1. Open Root in the pane you want to use.
2. Choose the drive, account or bucket to browse.
3. In a list, double-click a bucket or folder to open it. In a tree, expand the branches and select the folder you want to view.

For a simple starting layout, choose View > Left view > List view and View > Right view > List view. Each pane then shows a list of files and folders. The other views are explained in the browser panes guide.

Click the file you want to use before choosing a command. Copy, Cut and Paste act on files in the pane you are working in. When the cursor is in a text field, the same commands act on text.

Understand addresses and S3 folders#

The Address field shows the open folder. A local address might be C:\Documents. An S3 address might be s3://my-bucket/photos/: you are viewing the photos folder in the my-bucket bucket.

In a general purpose S3 bucket, folders group objects whose names share the same beginning. For example, photos/vacances.jpg is the object’s full name. S3Client shows a photos folder with the file vacances.jpg inside it. The photos/ part is called a prefix. See how folders work in Amazon S3.

An s3://... address does not contain your credentials or identify the account in use. To use the right account, select the bucket under that account in Root. To inspect its connection, click the button next to Address, whose tooltip reads Account and connection…, then choose Bucket connection…. The dialog shows Signing region and Endpoint, the region used to sign requests and the service address. Click Cancel to close it without changing the connection. See addresses and favorites to enter a location directly.

Recognize previous versions#

Some buckets keep several versions of an object. By default, S3Client shows current files. Show versions lets you view their history when the account’s capabilities and the bucket’s state allow it. This command displays versions; it does not enable versioning on the bucket.

1. In List view, open the bucket itself from Root, without entering a folder.
2. Click the Show versions button in the pane’s toolbar to display the history. Its tooltip helps you identify it.
3. Click the button again to return to current files.

In a tree, you can also select the bucket and select or clear Show versions in its context menu. Folders in the bucket use the same display mode.

In the Version column, Current identifies the current version and Previous an older version. Current delete marker and Previous delete marker identify delete markers. They record a deletion and contain no file to download.

Read versions and deletion before making changes to the history.