MinIO
MinIO is the most common self-hosted S3 implementation and the one with the fewest surprises in day-to-day use. Two things differ from a cloud provider: you supply the full URL including the port, and path-style addressing is not optional. S3 Explorer locks the toggle accordingly.
Connection settings
- Endpoint
- http://{host}:{port}
- Default region
- us-east-1
- Addressing
- Path-style (enforced)
- Temporary credentials
- Not applicable
A filled-in example
Every value below is fabricated — they are shaped like real MinIO credentials so you can recognise yours, and they authenticate nothing.
- Endpoint
- https://minio.example.internal:9000
- Region
- us-east-1
- Access key
- minio-readwrite-user
- Secret key
- EXAMPLEminioSecretDoNotUse0123456789
- Addressing
- Path-style (locked)
For a local development server the URL is usually http://192.168.1.10:9000 with the minioadmin / minioadmin default pair. Do not leave those defaults on anything reachable from outside.
Where each value comes from
Endpoint
Enter the full URL including port — e.g., http://192.168.1.10:9000 or https://minio.example.com
Credentials
Use the Access Key and Secret Key configured in your MinIO deployment (default: minioadmin/minioadmin for dev).
Notes
Path-style addressing is mandatory. Set region to "us-east-1" or any value (MinIO ignores it). Disable TLS for local HTTP endpoints.
What usually goes wrong
An object and a folder with the same name can break listings
On a single-drive deployment (xl-single), creating an object called reports and a prefix called reports/ in the same place can corrupt what the server returns for that listing. The files remain intact and retrievable by exact key, but they stop appearing. S3 Explorer warns before you create such a name.
The region is accepted and ignored
MinIO does not implement regions. Any value works; us-east-1 is the conventional filler. If a tool refuses to connect without one, that is the value to type.
TLS has to match the scheme
A server started without certificates answers on http only. Pointing an https URL at it produces a handshake failure rather than a clear refusal — check the scheme before suspecting the credentials.
Older servers reject modern checksums
MinIO releases before 2025 do not implement the flexible checksum framework the AWS SDK now sends by default, and reject batch deletes that carry it. S3 Explorer falls back to the legacy Content-MD5 header automatically.