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S3 and SFTP

S3 and SFTP mounts add a remote location to one pane without changing the rest of the Newt session. The other pane and terminal stay where they are, making these mounts suitable for transfers between local and remote storage.

Open the filesystem selector with Mod + Shift + L and choose S3. Newt supports Amazon S3 and services that implement the S3 API.

Connections can use:

  • the normal AWS credential chain;
  • a named AWS profile;
  • an access key and secret stored as a connection profile;
  • an assumed IAM role;
  • a custom endpoint for S3-compatible storage.

The Region field is optional. If you enter one, Newt uses that region for every bucket and does not request each bucket’s location. If you leave it empty, Newt discovers and caches bucket regions; that requires permission for GetBucketLocation.

Buckets appear as directories and object keys as files. A mounted path is displayed as s3://bucket/prefix/key.

Mounting performs a small listing request before the dialog closes. Invalid credentials, endpoints, or scoped buckets therefore fail in the dialog, where the connection can be edited and retried, rather than on the first pane listing.

S3 supports reading, writing, copying, renaming, creating prefixes, and deleting objects. Because it is object storage, it does not provide trash, hard links, symbolic links, Unix permissions, or filesystem free-space statistics. A normal delete therefore becomes a permanent deletion after confirmation.

Properties include S3 metadata such as storage class, ACL information, and user metadata when available.

Choose SFTP from the filesystem selector and enter a host in the form user@hostname.

The S3 and SFTP dialogs have separate Save and Mount actions. Mounting does not change a saved profile, and saving does not connect. The first Save… action reveals an automatically suggested profile name; save again or press Enter in that field to persist it. During a mount, the dialog shows connection progress. If the mount fails, it remains open for editing and retrying.

Newt runs the system SSH client in SFTP mode, so ~/.ssh/config, SSH agents, key files, proxy settings, and keyboard-interactive authentication continue to work. Password and host-key prompts appear inside Newt.

SFTP supports reading, writing, renaming, directory creation, deletion, links, and common Unix metadata. Trash and filesystem free-space reporting are unavailable, so deletes are permanent after confirmation.

An S3 or SFTP mount is created from the current session. If you mount one while using a full SSH session, the connection uses the SSH host’s network, AWS credentials, SSH configuration, and keys—not those of the computer displaying the Newt window.