Hoistbay icon

Hoistbay

Hoistbay is a free, open-source desktop app for managing Amazon S3 buckets and CloudFront distributions. It helps developers handle deployment uploads, object changes, metadata fixes, and cache invalidations from macOS or Windows.

Hoistbay

Desktop management for Amazon S3 and CloudFront

Hoistbay is a free, open-source desktop application for browsing and managing Amazon S3 buckets and Amazon CloudFront distributions. It is designed for the repeated storage and CDN tasks around releases, including uploading build folders, applying upload headers, managing objects, and invalidating cached content without using the AWS Console or remembering command-line flags.

The app connects to official AWS regional endpoints over HTTPS and states that it has no intermediary backend or analytics. Credentials are kept in the native key store on supported operating systems, while the MIT-licensed source is available for inspection or local builds with Flutter.

Core capabilities for S3 and CloudFront work

Per-bucket upload header rules

Set rules per bucket so matching files receive specified Cache-Control values on upload. The site gives long-lived caching for JavaScript and CSS and no-cache for HTML as examples.

Object and folder management

Upload files or multiple folders while preserving folder structure, download objects or folders, and perform multi-select rename, move, copy across buckets or regions, and deletion operations.

CloudFront cache invalidation

Browse CloudFront distributions alongside buckets, invalidate all paths or named paths after a deployment, and follow the invalidation status.

Metadata inspection and editing

View an object's properties, HTTP headers, tags, and versions. Content-Type, Content-Encoding, and x-amz-meta-* values can be changed without re-uploading the object.

Activity tracking and retry handling

A single activity panel reports live progress, start and finish times, and success or failure for uploads, downloads, deletes, and cache clears. Network failures are retried up to three times and remaining failures are reported per object.

AWS profile and S3 workflow support

Save account-and-region profiles, switch between them, and use session tokens. The app detects bucket regions automatically and includes handling for special-character keys, Content-MD5 bulk deletes, and large folder pagination.

Practical deployment and storage scenarios

  • Publishing a static site release

    Upload a completed web build as a folder while retaining its directory structure and applying predefined caching rules to asset and HTML file patterns.

  • Refreshing CDN-delivered content

    After a deployment, invalidate all CloudFront paths or selected paths and use the activity status to confirm that the cache clear completed.

  • Maintaining S3-hosted assets

    Move or copy selected objects between buckets or regions, download a folder for local work, or remove unneeded objects as a bulk operation.

  • Repairing object delivery metadata

    Correct an object's Content-Type, Content-Encoding, or custom metadata in place when an existing asset has incorrect delivery settings.

  • Working across AWS environments

    Keep separate saved connections for production, development, or staging AWS environments and switch profiles when working across accounts and regions.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Free and open source under the MIT license, with source available on GitHub.
  • Keeps credentials in macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager and states that the app communicates only with AWS.
  • Combines build-folder uploads, object administration, metadata fixes, and CloudFront invalidation in one desktop workflow.
  • Provides per-object failure reporting and automatic retry attempts for network interruptions.
  • Supports account and region profiles, including temporary session-token credentials.

Cons

  • The published desktop clients support macOS and Windows; Linux is listed as coming soon.
  • The macOS build is not yet notarized by Apple, so first launch requires the documented manual approval step.
  • Its documented scope is Amazon S3 and CloudFront rather than broader AWS service administration.

FAQ

Where are AWS credentials stored?

Hoistbay stores AWS access keys in the native credential storage on supported platforms: macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager. The site states that keys are read when the app calls AWS.

Can it work with multiple AWS accounts or temporary credentials?

It supports saved profiles by AWS account and region, with session tokens for temporary credentials. Bucket regions are detected automatically.

Which operating systems are supported?

The application is available for macOS 12 or later on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and for Windows 10/11 x64. A Linux client is listed as coming soon.

How does CloudFront cache invalidation work?

Hoistbay can invalidate all paths using /* or selected paths, and displays invalidation progress until the cache is cleared.

Quick Facts

Category
Developer Tool
Primary services
Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront
Platforms
macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon and Intel); Windows 10/11 x64
License
MIT open source
Current release shown
v1.1.0
Source site
hoistbay.app

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