Installing the Amazon Q Developer extension or plugin in your IDE
To set up Amazon Q Developer in your integrated development environment (IDE), complete the following steps. After installing the Amazon Q extension or plugin, authenticate through IAM Identity Center or AWS Builder ID. You can use Amazon Q for free, without an AWS account, by authenticating with Builder ID.
To get started, download the Amazon Q extension or plugin for your IDE:
To sign in and authenticate, complete the steps in this section.
Steps
Prerequisite: Choose a supported version of your IDE
Amazon Q is available as an extension in Visual Studio Code and a plugin in JetBrains. Amazon Q is also available in the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio.
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The minimum version of Visual Studio Code supported by Amazon Q is 1.85.0.
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The minimum version of JetBrains IDEs (including IntelliJ and PyCharm) supported by Amazon Q is 232.1. JetBrains versions 232, 233 and 241 are also supported.
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The minimum version of Visual Studio supported by Amazon Q is 1.68.
Authenticating with Amazon Q Developer Pro
Before you begin this procedure, your administrator should have:
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Created an identity for you in IAM Identity Center
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Subscribed that identity to Amazon Q Developer Pro
After your identity has been subscribed to Amazon Q Developer Pro, complete the following steps to authenticate:
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Install the Amazon Q IDE extension or plugin in your Visual Studio Code or JetBrains IDE:
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Choose the Amazon Q icon from the sidebar in your IDE.
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Choose Use with Pro license.
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Fill in the Start URL that your administrator got from the Amazon Q subscription console.
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Fill in the AWS Region in which your administrator set up your IAM Identity Center account instance.
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Choose Continue. The focus will switch to your web browser.
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Follow the instructions in your browser to authenticate with IAM Identity Center.
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Begin using Amazon Q in your IDE.
Authenticating with AWS Builder ID
This procedure does not require you to have Builder ID. If you have not yet signed up for Builder ID, you will have the opportunity to do so during the sign-in process.
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Install the Amazon Q IDE extension or plugin in your Visual Studio Code or JetBrains IDE:
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Choose the Amazon Q icon in your IDE.
In VS Code and JetBrains, the icon will be on the side of the interface by default.
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Follow the instructions in your browser to authenticate with Builder ID.
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Begin using Amazon Q in your IDE.
Authenticating to Visual Studio
Refer to the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio documentation for setup instructions.
Using an IAM principal in your AWS console
Depending on how you use AWS, you may be accustomed to using your IAM credentials to sign in to the console for all AWS services. However, you cannot use Amazon Q Developer in the IDE as an IAM principal, or with an IAM role. You must authenticate with credentials from either IAM Identity Center or Builder ID.
Understanding AWS coding environments
If you’re developing software, then the way to get the most out of Amazon Q Developer is to subscribe to Amazon Q Developer Pro, and to use Amazon Q through the Amazon Q extension in Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code, or the plugin in a JetBrains IDE. Most of the features described in this chapter pertain to that setup.
However, there are many other aspects of your AWS experience in which you might end up writing code. For example, you might write code directly in the AWS Lambda interface. In some such cases, inline code suggestions from Amazon Q can be available to you.
Environments in which you may enable code suggestions include:
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Amazon SageMaker Studio Classic
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JupyterLab
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Amazon EMR Studio
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AWS Glue Studio
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AWS Lambda
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AWS Cloud9
To enable code suggestions in coding environments within the AWS console, your administrator must assign you the appropriate permissions.
