Do I have to get a signed URL for every image on AWS S3?

Question

Lets say I have a social media app like Instagram. Do I have to get a signed URL for every single image? Each user sees like 100 images, does that mean that it has to get 100 singed URLs for each user?

Answer 1

To make an entire Amazon S3 bucket "public" (or a path within the bucket), use a bucket policy.

From Bucket policy examples - Amazon Simple Storage Service:

The following example policy grants the s3:GetObject permission to any public anonymous users. This permission allows anyone to read the object data, which is useful for when you configure your bucket as a website and want everyone to be able to read objects in the bucket.

{
  "Version":"2012-10-17",
  "Statement":[
    {
      "Sid":"PublicRead",
      "Effect":"Allow",
      "Principal": "*",
      "Action":["s3:GetObject","s3:GetObjectVersion"],
      "Resource":["arn:aws:s3:::DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/*"]
    }
  ]
}

Before you use a bucket policy to grant read-only permission to an anonymous user, you must disable Block Public Access settings for your bucket.