AWS CLI

S3 Commands

Store and retrieve objects in S3. Learn bucket operations, sync commands, and best practices for cloud storage management.

9 commands

Pro Tips

Use 'aws s3 sync' instead of 'cp' for directories - it only copies changed files.

Add '--dryrun' to sync/cp commands to see what would be transferred without doing it.

Use 's3://' for high-level commands (s3 sync) and 's3api' for low-level API operations.

Common Mistakes

Public buckets can leak sensitive data. Check bucket policies and ACLs regularly.

S3 delete is permanent (unless versioning is enabled). Enable versioning for important buckets.

Commands

List buckets

$ aws s3 ls

List all S3 buckets.

List bucket contents

$ aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name/ --recursive

List all objects in bucket.

Copy to S3

$ aws s3 cp file.txt s3://bucket/path/

Upload file to S3.

Copy from S3

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket/file.txt ./

Download file from S3.

Sync to S3

$ aws s3 sync ./dist s3://bucket-name --delete

Sync directory, deleting removed files.

Create bucket

$ aws s3 mb s3://my-new-bucket --region us-east-1

Create new S3 bucket.

Delete bucket

$ aws s3 rb s3://bucket-name --force

Delete bucket and all contents.

Presigned URL

$ aws s3 presign s3://bucket/file.txt --expires-in 3600

Generate temporary download URL.

Get bucket size

$ aws s3 ls s3://bucket --recursive --summarize | tail -2

Show total bucket size and object count.