Connect your first bucket

This guide is for whoever sets quickS3 up. When you’re done, quickS3 is connected to your storage account and your buckets show up on Buckets. If you already have an access key, it takes about five minutes.

Before you start

First, you need to be an Owner. Signing up creates an organisation for you, named after your email address, and makes you its Owner. The organisation switcher at the top right shows your role next to each organisation you belong to.

Second, you need an access key from your storage provider. Make a new key just for quickS3 rather than reusing one from another app. It has to be able to list and read buckets, and to write if your team will upload. quickS3 keeps this key (encrypted) and uses it on your team’s behalf, so limit it to the buckets your team actually needs.

The provider guides show where to create the key and what to fill in: AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, and MinIO.

1. Add the connection

1. After creating your account, quickS3 opens Connections and asks where your buckets are. If you’re returning later, open Connections and select New connection.
2. Choose your provider. The form includes a link to that provider’s key-creation guide if you still need a dedicated key.
3. Enter a Name your team will recognise, like “Marketing assets”. Fill in the required provider fields, such as the region or account ID, then paste the access key and secret. You can leave Advanced details closed; quickS3 makes a connection slug from the name.

4. Leave Uploads and CORS closed unless you need to change the defaults: CORS updates on, backend upload fallback off, and no additional upload size limit.

5. Select Connect provider.

After you save, nobody can read the secret back, including you. To change the key later, edit the connection and type the new one. If you leave the key fields blank while editing, quickS3 keeps the current key.

2. Confirm the connection

Saving verifies the key before quickS3 stores the connection. When the connection succeeds, a Connection added and verified message appears with Open your buckets and an optional Test again action. A separate test is useful later for rechecking CORS or troubleshooting, but it is not required during setup.

What the result means:

• Connection verified (green): quickS3 signed in and listed your buckets. The CORS part of the message confirms that browsers can upload straight to the bucket, so quickS3 turns the backend upload fallback off because it isn’t needed.
• Connection verified with warning (amber): the key works, but CORS blocks browser uploads for now. Browsing and downloading will work. See browser uploads and CORS to fix uploads.
• Connection check failed (red): quickS3 couldn’t connect. The message usually points at the cause, like a wrong key or a region that doesn’t match. Test and troubleshoot a connection lists the common ones.

3. Open a bucket

Select Open your buckets in the success message, or open Buckets. Each connection has a card with its buckets (Azure calls them containers). Select one to start browsing.

If the card says there are no buckets, your key probably isn’t allowed to list them. That’s normal for keys limited to specific buckets. Edit the connection and type the bucket names into Bucket scopes, separated by commas.

Next: give your team access

As the Owner, you can open every bucket on every connection. Nobody else can until you give them a role, and that includes Admins.

1. Create a role that says which buckets or folders people can read or write.
2. Invite people and give them that role.

The Admin quickstart walks through both.