Set up Amplify CLI

Install the Amplify CLI

The Amplify Command Line Interface (CLI) is a unified toolchain to create AWS cloud services for your app. Let's go ahead and install the Amplify CLI.

1npm install -g @aws-amplify/cli

Resolve EACCES permissions when installing packages globally with npm

Pre-requisites for installation

Install Node.js® and NPM if they are not already on your machine.
Verify that you are running at least Node.js version 12.x and npm version 6.x or greater by running node -v and npm -v in a terminal/console window
Create AWS Account. If you don't already have an AWS account, you'll need to create one in order to follow the steps outlined in this tutorial.
For Apple Silicon Macs, if you don’t already have Rosetta installed, install using softwareupdate --install-rosetta.

Configure the Amplify CLI

To set up the Amplify CLI on your local machine, you have to configure it to connect to your AWS account.

If you already have an AWS profile with credentials on your machine, you can skip this step.

Configure Amplify by running the following command:

1amplify configure

amplify configure will ask you to sign into the AWS Console.

Once you're signed in, Amplify CLI will ask you to create an IAM user.

Amazon IAM (Identity and Access Management) enables you to manage users and user permissions in AWS. You can learn more about Amazon IAM here.

1Specify the AWS Region
2? region:  # Your preferred region
3Follow the instructions at
4https://docs.amplify.aws/cli/start/install/#configure-the-amplify-cli
5
6to complete the user creation in the AWS console
7https://console.aws.amazon.com/iamv2/home#/users/create

Navigate to the IAM User creation page if it's not already open.

Enter a User name and select Next. You can name the user anything but we'll call it "amplify-dev".

First step of creating an IAM user. Specifying user details.

Select Attach policies directly and select AdministratorAccess-Amplify as the Permissions policy. Select Next.

Second step of creating an IAM user. Setting permissions.

On the Review page, check that everything looks good and select Create user.

Third and final step of creating an IAM user. Reviewing and creating.

This will redirect to the users list page. Select the user you just created.

New user being shown in the Users table.

On the user details page, navigate to the Security credentials tab, scroll down to Access keys and select Create access keys.

Security credentials tab of the newly created user.

On the next page, select Command Line Interface, acknowledge the warning, and select Next.

Command Line Interface option selected on the options list.

On the next page select Create access key. You’ll then see a page with the access keys for the user. Use the copy icon to copy these values to your clipboard, then return to the Amplify CLI.

Retrieve access keys page with access key and secret access key copy buttons circled.

Enter the values you just copied into the corresponding CLI prompts.

1Enter the access key of the newly created user:
2? accessKeyId:  # YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID
3? secretAccessKey:  # YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
4This would update/create the AWS Profile in your local machine
5? Profile Name:  # (default)
6
7Successfully set up the new user.

Work within your frontend project

After you install the CLI, navigate to a JavaScript, iOS, or Android project root, initialize AWS Amplify in the new directory by running amplify init. After a few configuration questions, you can use amplify help at any time to see the overall command structure. When you’re ready to add a feature, run amplify add <category>.

Explore key workflows for Amplify CLI