Aws s3 console download multiple files

Let us start straight away with the methods to download files from the AWS S3 bucket. I will show you the method to download a single file, multiple files, or an entire bucket.

Basically, you can download the files using the AWS CLI or the S3 console.

I will first show you the S3 console method and then the CLI method.

Using the S3 console

Download multiple files/ entire bucket

Unfortunately, you cannot download multiple files (or the entire bucket) at the same time using the AWS console. You can download one file at a time.

You will have to use the CLI method to download multiple files.

As you can see in the picture below, when I select multiple files the download button gets disabled.

But wait...

You can try the below steps and see if it works for you.

These steps did not work for me but I have seen these working for others. You can definitely try.

1. Open the S3 console
2. Click on the bucket from which you want to download the file
3. Select all the files which you want to download and click on Open. Look at the picture below.
   I guess there is a limit in Chrome and it will only download 6 files at once.

Download single file

To download a single file follow the below steps -

1. Open the S3 console
2. Click on the bucket from which you want to download the file
3. Select the file that you want to download and click on the download button

Using the AWS CLI

Note - If you are wondering, let me tell you that you do not need to specify any region in the below commands.

Download single/multiple files

To download the files as per your requirements, you can use the following command -

aws s3 cp s3://path-to-bucket/ <path-to-local-folder> --recursive --exclude "*" --include "file1" --include "file2"

For example -

To download the files (one from the images folder in s3 and the other not in any folder) from the bucket that I created, the following command can be used -

aws s3 cp s3://knowledgemanagementsystem/ ./s3-files --recursive --exclude "*" --include "images/file1" --include "file2"

In the above example the --exclude "*" excludes all the files present in the bucket. And then we include the two files from the excluded files.

Let us say we have three files in our bucket, file1, file2, and file3. By specifying exclude "*", we exclude all the three files.

And then with the help of include, we can include the files which we want to download. Example - --include "file1" will include the file1.

Download the entire S3 bucket

To download the entire bucket, use the below command -

aws s3 sync s3://<your-bucket> <local-folder>

The above command downloads all the files from the bucket you specified in the local folder.

Example-

aws s3 sync s3://knowledgemanagementsystem ./s3-files

Difference between sync and cp

As you may have noticed, we have used sync or cp in the above commands.

Just for your knowledge, the difference between the sync and cp is that the sync option syncs your bucket with the local folder whereas the cp command copies the objects you specified to the local folder.

For our purpose (to download files from s3) we can use either one of sync or cp.

Conclusion

I believe this post helped you solve your problem. I hope you got what you were looking for and you learned something valuable.

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Thank you and keep learning

Abhishek Sharma