Working with the AWS Management Console

Welcome to the AWS Management Console. This guide provides a short introduction to working with the console. To learn how to work with individual services in the console, see AWS Documentation.

What is the AWS Management Console?

The AWS Management Console is a web application that comprises and refers to a broad collection of service consoles for managing Amazon Web Services. When you first sign in, you see the console home page. The home page provides access to each service console as well as an intuitive user interface for exploring AWS and getting helpful tips.

The individual service consoles, on the other hand, offer a wide range of tools for cloud computing, as well as information about your account and about billing.

Getting started with a service

The AWS Management Console provides multiple ways for navigating to individual service consoles.

To open a console for a service

Do one of the following:

• In the search box on the navigation bar, enter all or part of the name of the service. Under Services, choose the service that you want from the list of search results. For more information, see Searching for products, services, features, and more.

• Under Recently visited services, choose a service name.

• Under All services, choose a service name.

• On the navigation bar, choose Services to open a full list of services. Then choose a service under Recently visited or All services.

Choosing a Region

For many services, you can choose an AWS Region that specifies where your resources are managed. You don't choose a Region for the AWS Management Console or for some services, such as IAM.

To choose a Region

1. In the AWS Management Console, choose a service to go to that service's console.

2. On the navigation bar, choose the name of the currently displayed Region. Then choose the Region that you want to change to.

   

   When you choose a Region, that Region becomes the default in the console.

Note

If you have created AWS resources, but you don't see those resources in the console, the console might be displaying resources from a different Region. Some resources (such as EC2 instances) are created in a specific Region. To see them, use the Region selector to choose the Region in which the resources were created.

Searching for products, services, features, and more

The search box in the navigation bar provides a unified search tool for tracking down AWS services and features, service documentation, and AWS Marketplace. Just type in a few characters to see results from all these categories. The more characters you type, the more search refines your results.

To search for a service, feature, documentation, or AWS Marketplace product

1. In search box on the navigation bar of the AWS Management Console, enter all or part of your search terms.

2. Do any of the following to refine your search and get more detail:

   • To narrow the results to the type of content that you want, choose one of the categories on the left.

   • To see more results for a particular category, choose See all n results by each category heading. To return to the main results list, choose Back in the top left corner.

   • To quickly navigate to popular features of a service, pause on the service name in the results and choose a link.

   • To get more detail about a documentation or AWS Marketplace result, pause on the result title.

3. Choose any link to navigate to your intended service, topic, or AWS Marketplace page.

Tip

You can also use your keyboard to quickly navigate to the top search result. First, press Alt+s (Windows) or Option+s (macOS) to access the search bar. Then start entering your search term. When the intended result appears at the top of the list, press Enter. For example, to quickly navigate to the Amazon EC2 console, enter ec2 and press Enter.

Adding and removing favorites

For easy access, you can save the consoles that you use the most to a list of Favorites.

To add a service to the list of Favorites

1. On the navigation bar, choose Services.

2. In either the Recently visited list or the All services list, pause on the name of the service that you want to add as a favorite.

3. Select the star to the left of the service name.

   

4. Repeat the previous two steps to add more services to your Favorites list.

To remove a service from the list of Favorites

1. On the navigation bar, choose Services.

2. Do one of the following:

   • In the Favorites list, pause on the name of a service. Then choose the X to the right of the service name.

   • In the Recently visited list or All services list, deselect the star by the name of a service that is in your Favorites list.

Changing your password

If you are an account owner, you can change your AWS account password from the AWS Management Console.

To change your password

1. On the navigation bar, choose your account name.

2. Choose My Security Credentials.

3. The page that you see varies with the type of account that you used to sign in. Follow the console instructions to get to the page for changing your password.

4. Enter your current password once and your new password twice.

   The new password must be at least eight characters long and must include a symbol, a number, an uppercase letter, and a lowercase letter.

5. When you've completed the password form, choose Change Password or Save changes.

Getting billing information

If you have the necessary permissions, you can get information about your AWS charges from the console.

To get your billing information

1. On the navigation bar, choose your account name.

2. Choose My Billing Dashboard.

3. Use the AWS Billing and Cost Management dashboard to find a summary and a breakdown of your monthly spending. To learn more, see the AWS Billing and Cost Management User Guide.

Using the device of your choice

The AWS Management Console has been designed to work on tablets as well as other kinds of devices:

• Horizontal and vertical space is maximized to show more on your screen.

   

• Buttons and selectors are larger for a better touch experience.

The AWS Management Console is also available as an app for Android and iOS. This app provides mobile-relevant tasks that are a good companion to the full web experience. For example, you can easily view and manage your existing Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon CloudWatch alarms from your phone.

You can download the AWS Console mobile app from Amazon Appstore, Google Play, or iTunes.

Troubleshooting

Consult this section to find solutions to common problems with the AWS Management Console.

Fix page load issues with Internet Explorer 11

If you use the AWS Management Console with Internet Explorer 11, the browser might fail to load some pages of the console. This is a problem related to Internet Explorer's Compatibility View. To address this issue, in Internet Explorer, open Compatibility View Settings and disable Display intranet sites in Compatibility View.

For more information, see Fix site display problems with Compatibility View.