Using Transmit 4 for macOS with DigitalOcean Spaces

Spaces Object Storage is an S3-compatible object storage service that lets you store and serve large amounts of data. Each Space is a bucket for you to store and serve files. The built-in Spaces CDN minimizes page load times, improves performance, and reduces bandwidth and infrastructure costs.

Transmit is a macOS-only file transfer utility developed by Panic, Inc.. It handles a wide variety of server types including FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and S3-compatible servers.

Setup

To use Transmit, you need:

• Transmit 4, which you can download in .zip format.
• An access key pair for your Spaces buckets. To generate these, visit the API page in the DigitalOcean Control Panel.

Connect to Spaces

Launch the Transmit application by clicking on its icon in the dock, or double-clicking its icon in your Applications folder. Transmit will open and display a window with your local filesystem on the left, and an FTP connection pane on the right:

At the top of the right-hand pane, Transmit 4 lists the different types of connections it supports, FTP, SFTP, S3, and WebDAV.

Click on S3 to bring up the form for connecting to an S3-compatible server and fill in the following details:

• Server: this should be the DigitalOcean datacenter region (nyc3, ams3, etc.) followed by .digitaloceanspaces.com. We will use nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com in this tutorial.
• Access Key ID: your-access-key
• Secret: your-secret-key
• Initial Path: leave this blank to open a list of all your NYC3 buckets when you connect, or add the name of a pre-existing bucket here to navigate directly to it when connecting

Click the blue Connect button to connect to Spaces. Transmit will connect, then display a list of your buckets (if you left the Initial Path option blank):

If you have not yet created a bucket, this will be empty.

Create a New Bucket

To create a new bucket with Transmit 4, first move to the root directory where all your buckets are listed. You can do this by clicking the / slash all the way on the left of the breadcrumb trail at the top of the right-hand pane:

Once you’ve done that, click on the Action menu in the toolbar (it has a gear-shaped icon), then choose New Bucket….

A dialog will pop up, asking for a bucket name and location.

Choose any name that fits the guidelines mentioned in the dialog. Leave the default Location value. Click Create and your new bucket will be created and added to the list.

Note

Bucket names must be unique across all regions, so if your name is already in use anywhere on digitaloceanspaces.com, Transmit will give you an error. If this happens, try another name.

Upload Files to Spaces

Double-click on the folder that represents your bucket. This opens it and lists its contents in the right-hand pane:

To upload a file, first navigate through your local filesystem using the left-hand side of the Transmit window, then click and drag the file from the left-hand pane to the right. It will copy over to your bucket and show up in the directory listing on the right-hand side. You can also drag and drop files directly from the macOS Finder.

Adjust File Permissions

In the right-hand pane, after navigating to your bucket, click once on a file you’d like to view. This will select the file. Then click on the Action menu in the toolbar:

To change the permissions on your file, select Get Info from the Action menu. A window will open with more details about the file, including its size, location, kind, and Read and Write permissions:

Use the dropdown menu next to Read: to change the setting, then click the Apply button at the bottom of the info window:

Transmit will update the permissions on the file.

More Information

To learn more about other Transmit features that could help integrate Spaces into your macOS-based workflow, visit Panic’s Transmit Documentation Library.