django admin static files are uploaded to s3 via `collectstatic` but not served when running locally

Question

I'm following this tutorial for storing static and media files on s3. This is what my static files configuration in settings.py looks like:

USE_S3 = os.getenv('USE_S3') == 'TRUE'
## AWS Configuration
if USE_S3:
    # aws settings
    AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = os.getenv('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID')
    AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = os.getenv('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY')
    AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME = os.getenv('AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME')
    AWS_DEFAULT_ACL = None # differs from the tutorial because the bucket is private
    AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN = f'{AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME}.s3.amazonaws.com'
    AWS_S3_OBJECT_PARAMETERS = {'CacheControl': 'max-age=86400'}
    # s3 static settings
    AWS_LOCATION = 'static'
    STATIC_URL = f'https://{AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN}/{AWS_LOCATION}/'
    STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'storages.backends.s3boto3.S3Boto3Storage'
else:
    STATIC_URL = '/staticfiles/'
    STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'staticfiles')

STATICFILES_DIRS = (os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),)

MEDIA_URL = '/mediafiles/'
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'mediafiles'

After setting all the env variables I run python manage.py collectstatic and I can see that the files have been successfully uploaded to my s3 bucket. I.e. I see static/admin/ directory on s3 with fonts, css, etc.

However when I run the server locally the admin panel is missing all the css. I'm not sure why django cannot find the admin static files given that collectstatic worked. I found several other tutorials here, here and here but I can't find what I'm missing. For all of them it seems like it's supposed to "just work" after running collectstatic... What did I forget?

Note The admin panel is fine when USE_S3 == False

Answer 1

So the objects in the s3 bucket weren't public. I made the assets public and now it's working.