I Was Tired of Writing S3 Bucket Policies, So I Built a Visual Generator Inspired by WhatsApp Privacy
When I started learning AWS through the GitHub Student Developer Pack, I spent a good chunk of that time inside S3, poking around at its access management.
One part of it kept slowing me down: Bucket Policies.
Every time I wanted to give someone access to a file or folder, I'd end up bouncing between AWS docs and a JSON editor. One missing action or a stray syntax error and the whole policy would break — and debugging it wasn't exactly friendly to someone still learning the ropes.
That's when a question started nagging at me:
Why can't setting a bucket policy be as simple as WhatsApp Status Privacy?
Instead of editing JSON by hand, imagine just choosing:
- No One
- Everyone
- Department Only
- Domain Only
- Share Only With
- Everyone Except
...and letting the app generate the policy for you.
Building the Solution
That question became the Bucket Policy Generator — a frontend app that turns simple UI choices into bucket policy JSON.
Features
- Read, Write, Download, and Full Access permission profiles
- Single or multiple files and folders
- Sharing with specific users
- Department-based access
- Domain-based access
- "Everyone Except" support
- Live JSON preview
- Copy and download the generated JSON
- Built with plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
The goal was never to replace AWS — just to flatten the learning curve by keeping policy syntax out of the way while still producing a properly structured policy underneath.
Why I Built It
Understanding permissions is hard enough on its own. Beginners shouldn't have to fight JSON formatting on top of that just to grasp access control.
I wanted people to focus on what access they're granting, not how the JSON has to be written.
Live Demo
https://tharvesh2026.github.io/policy-generator/
I'm still actively working on this and would love feedback from the community. A few things on the roadmap:
- Multiple policy statements
- Policy templates
- Importing existing policies
- Validation before export
- Role and group support
If bucket policies have ever tripped you up while learning AWS, I'd like to hear how you dealt with it.
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