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.

npm install -g @aws-amplify/cli

curl -sL https://aws-amplify.github.io/amplify-cli/install | bash && $SHELL

curl -sL https://aws-amplify.github.io/amplify-cli/install-win -o install.cmd && install.cmd

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.

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

Configure Amplify by running the following command:

Terminal

amplify configure

The configure command only supports creating AWS profiles that use permanent credentials. If you are using an IAM role or IAM Identity Center (previously AWS SSO), learn how to configure Amplify CLI manually

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

Once you're signed in, Amplify CLI will ask you to use the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to create an IAM user.

Terminal
Specify the AWS Region
? region:  # Your preferred region
Follow the instructions at
https://docs.amplify.aws/cli/start/install/#configure-the-amplify-cli
to complete the user creation in the AWS console
https://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.

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

Manually configure the Amplify CLI

If you are using an IAM role or IAM Identity Center (previously AWS SSO), you can configure your local machine for use with Amplify CLI by creating AWS profile entries manually rather than the amplify configure wizard.

To create an AWS profile locally using IAM Identity Center, you can use the AWS CLI wizard, aws configure sso, or write to ~/.aws/config directly:

Learn how to install the AWS CLI

~/.aws/config
[profile my-sso-profile]
sso_session = my-sso
sso_account_id = 123456789011
sso_role_name = AdministratorAccess-Amplify
region = us-west-2
output = json
[sso-session my-sso]
sso_region = us-east-1
sso_start_url = https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/start
sso_registration_scopes = sso:account:access

Currently, the Amplify CLI requires a workaround for use with IAM Identity Center due to an issue in how it resolves credentials.

~/.aws/config
[profile my-sso-profile]
sso_session = my-sso
sso_account_id = 123456789011
sso_role_name = AdministratorAccess-Amplify
region = us-west-2
output = json
+ credential_process = aws configure export-credentials --profile my-sso-profile
[sso-session my-sso]
sso_region = us-east-1
sso_start_url = https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/start
sso_registration_scopes = sso:account:access

Using the example above, when creating a new app or pulling an existing app, specify my-sso-profile as the AWS profile you'd like to use with the Amplify app.

To create an AWS profile locally using an IAM role, assign the AdministratorAccess-Amplify permissions set to the role and set the role in your ~/.aws/config file:

~/.aws/config
[profile amplify-admin]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/amplify-admin
source_profile = amplify-user
[profile amplify-user]
region=us-east-1

Using the example above, when creating a new app or pulling an existing app, specify amplify-admin as the AWS profile you'd like to use with the Amplify app

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