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Ever since I started using Amazon's S3 service I've been struggling to find a good solution for simple file management, without having to write my own app to browse my buckets, upload and delete files, etc.

The best I've found so far to do this is S3Fox. But it's far from perfect, it has problems deleting files and folders. Comments on the Firefox plugin page indicate I'm not the only person with this problem and the developer does not respond to emails.

I've looked around briefly, but couldn't find anything that looked any better than S3Fox.

Please tell me there's a better way!

Edit (07/26/2009): The Firefox S3Fox extension seems to be getting love from its developer again, the problems I was having before have gone away, and I'm using it on a regular basis now with no problems!

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Love the S3Fox add-on. This is going to be superbly useful to me. There's a nice YouTube tutorial too: youtube.com/watch?v=L1cqzEYYUB0 – JDelage Sep 16 '09 at 8:41
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18 Answers

up vote 26 down vote

Jungle Disk can map network drives to your buckets, and can help with your backups.

enter image description here

I use it regularly on Windows Vista and Mac OS X. Sometimes I use it to transfer files between my office and home computers.

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Doesn't jungle disk mangle the files on S3? IE, it breaks them up and gives them different files? – Gary Richardson Nov 11 '08 at 0:06
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You can choose to create a "compatibility" online disk that will not mangle the file names, although it is less efficient with things like file renames. – Kurt Nov 17 '09 at 20:40
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up vote 10 down vote

S3fm - free online Amazon S3 File Manager.

enter image description here

Loads directly from Amazon S3 and runs in your browser - fast, secure and convenient. No software to install, just click and go.

User friendly, fast, slick interface. Multiplatform, all major browsers supported. Built-in document viewer, image slide show and media layer. Drag & drop, multi-file uploads and downloads and plenty of other features.

Best of all, you don't have to share your credentials with a 3rd party web site as with other online solutions. S3fm, is a stand-alone Ajax app that communicates directly with Amazon S3 so your secret key never leaves your computer.

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Just started using it. It seems like this online app beats all that's out there in terms of usability. Finally something we can forward to our customers without having them take CS classes :) – Dick Lebavo Aug 3 '09 at 23:23
I second that -- this works great. – Kerry Mar 4 '11 at 16:42
One caveat with S3FM - the upload feature doesn't support mime type detection. This has caused me trouble in the past. – Kai Mar 9 '11 at 15:38
It doesn't support European buckets either... – Anders Hansson Jun 8 '11 at 20:27
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up vote 9 down vote

For Mac and Windows, Cyberduck (the FTP/SFTP client) has been able to handle it for a little while now, and I think it's pretty nice to use.

Amazon S3 for the rest of us.

Browse Amazon Simple Storage Service like your harddisk. Supporting the latest and greatest additions to the S3 storage options. Define website endpoints, logging options, storage class and geographical location of your content.

  • Versioning and MFA: Support for bucket versioning and Multi-Factor Authentication Delete. With versioning enabled, revert to any previous version of a file.

  • ACL: Configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for fine grained access permissions. Copy a signed URL for temporary access.

  • Metadata: You can edit standard HTTP headers and add custom HTTP headers to files to store metadata and control cache expire settings. Batch editing included.

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up vote 8 down vote

On the Mac, you can use the FTP client Transmit, which has Amazon S3 support built in.

Amazon S3:

  • CloudFront Support
  • Deploy your files via CDN
  • Bucket Loggin

enter image description here

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Must have been only some seconds later :-) I've deleted my answer and upvoted yours instead. – fhe Feb 8 '09 at 16:17
Transmit support is really good, it feels like regular FTP – Tom Aug 1 '09 at 23:13
Its very nice, but it can't handle transfering big files on S3. Literally nothing can :( – Trip Sep 20 '10 at 18:49
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up vote 5 down vote

If you are on Windows you can use CloudBerry Explorer for Amazon S3. With FTP like client it makes managing files in S3 EASY It supports most of the Amazon S3 and CloudFront features and It is a FREEWARE.

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up vote 4 down vote

S3 Hub is great if you're using a Mac.

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One of the best, definitely. Free and simple, yet powerful. Includes a convenient way to create temporary public links to otherwise private files (query string authentication). – TomA Dec 3 '10 at 20:52
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up vote 3 down vote

s3fs for Linux and Mac.

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up vote 3 down vote

I have a bucket with over 500k files. None of the tools I tried above worked very well because they would choke when I tried to navigate to the folder.

A really good cross-platform tool I found was jh3ll.

Its a simple command line utility that lets you navigate, copy, delete, upload, download files,etc. Because its command line it can deal with very large buckets without a problem. You can also batch up a bunch of commands and input them into the program for repeatable tasks.

https://jsh3ll.dev.java.net/

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Oh my god, I can't wait to try this. I've tried everything and it all always chokes.. <10 minutes later> FML, its windows, and possibly java exclusively? – Trip Sep 20 '10 at 18:51
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up vote 3 down vote

I like the S3 Firefox Organizer plugin for FireFox.

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This freezes constantly whenever I use it, and has a lot of trouble with large buckets and deletes – Chris S Jun 2 '09 at 9:35
yes i agree w you about deleting large quantities of items - has issues – Scott Evernden Oct 23 '09 at 13:42
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up vote 2 down vote

Some folks like JungleDisk. I've used it briefly, it seemed to work pretty well.

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I signed up for the free trial and am checking it out. It looks like you have to configure one network drive per bucket? That's kind of annoying... but I guess that's due to bucket naming restrictions. – mmacaulay Nov 10 '08 at 21:47
How so? Note that you can only have 100 buckets--buckets are not not meant to be a replacement for folders. – Stu Thompson Mar 26 '09 at 10:29
you also cant (currently) set the permissions of a file so as to make it publically accessible if your bucket maps to a URL - so its pretty useless for that – Simon Apr 20 '09 at 22:57
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up vote 2 down vote

I find I have to use two different tools to get the job done.

S3fox is great when you want to access S3 through a file browser interface. But like you said, deleting trees sucks. You also can't upload files to different names than you have them on your hard drive.

I also use S3 Browser a lot. It's nice because it doesn't break up the keys into file paths. Instead, you get a list of all the keys in a bucket. If you want to delete a bunch of files out of a tree, just shift-select them and hit delete. It also lets you change the destination file on upload.

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up vote 2 down vote

Just saw, Bucket Explorer, don't know how good it is compare to the others.

Now Bucket Explorer latest version will help you to manage and upload data more than 5 GB as well multipart download resume upload all the features are available.

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It can definately handle larger files, but still chokes after a few gigs. – Trip Sep 20 '10 at 19:25
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up vote 1 down vote

Maybe not just S3, but Elasticfox Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2

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i've found this thing to be very buggy - even the latest version as of today - be very patient and don't click on things too fast or it tends to get confused – Simon Mar 10 '09 at 6:11
Very buggy and on top of that I clear all my cache and cookies when I close FireFox which makes it impossible to use on a daily basis. – Luke Aug 12 '09 at 20:51
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up vote 1 down vote

Since version 4 Cyberduck has also a Windows client

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up vote 0 down vote

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it but ExpanDrive (for Mac and Windows) allows you to mount Amazon S3 shares in Finder. You can even change file permissions using the standard Get Info dialogue.

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up vote 0 down vote

I just found S3 Explorer. It's free to use, cross-browser and has nice features such as multiple file upload, good ACL editor and URL generator.

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up vote 0 down vote

I use CLoud Turtle, its FREE, all in one, access Amazon S3 and others, plus its super fast, its the only one with Mutiple threads upload download and serach

Cloud Turtle

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up vote 0 down vote

It depends what your goals are. If you are managing backend storage for a web site, most of the tools mentioned are not sufficient. You need control over metadata (headers) and permissions, plus the ability to handle thousands of files efficiently.

If these are your needs, and you don’t want to write scripts (using boto or s3cmd), the best I’ve found is CloudBerry Explorer. It was mentioned earlier, but appears to be someone from the company promoting it.

Nevertheless, it’s pretty good. The UI is clunky, but that’s what you get for working in Windows. Functionally, it’s superb and exposes almost every single capability of S3.

Cyberduck (Windows and Mac) is a close second. It’s not quite as powerful as CloudBerry Explorer, but does give you full control over metadata.

Transmit (Mac) is an absolute pleasure to use, but very limited in terms of metadata manipulation. You can set headers on upload, and that’s about it. You can’t even view metadata of existing files. I’ve also found it to be slow when dealing with large buckets. The S3 functionality has not been updated in a while and cannot create buckets in newer regions like Oregon and São Paulo (though you can access buckets in those regions).

Forklift (Mac) is not nearly as polished as Transmit but is blazing fast, even with large buckets. Like Transmit, it’s very limited in terms of metadata manipulation and not sufficient to manage S3 as backend web site storage.

With that said, both Transmit and Forklift can have a place in your toolbox for those times you need to make a quick change or upload a few files.

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