# Using Transmit 5 for macOS with DigitalOcean Spaces

Spaces Object Storage is an S3-compatible service for storing and serving large amounts of data. The built-in Spaces CDN minimizes page load times, improves performance, and reduces bandwidth and infrastructure costs.

[Transmit](https://panic.com/transmit) is a macOS-only file transfer utility developed by [Panic, Inc.](https://panic.com). It handles a wide variety of server types including FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and S3-compatible servers.

## Setup

To use Transmit, you need:

- **Transmit 5**, which you can [download from Panic’s website](https://panic.com/transmit/).
- **An [access key](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/spaces/how-to/manage-access/index.html.md#access-keys) pair for your Spaces buckets.** To generate these, visit the [Spaces Access Keys Page](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/spaces/access_keys) 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 opens and displays a window with your local filesystem on the left, and an SFTP connection pane on the right.

Click the **Protocol** selection menu, highlighted above, then select **Amazon S3**. This brings up the form for connecting to an S3-compatible server. Fill in the following details:

- **Address:** This is the datacenter you created your bucket in, followed by `digitaloceanspaces.com`. For nyc3, for example, fill in `nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com` for this value.
- **Access Key ID:** `your-access-key`
- **Secret:** `your-secret-key`
- **Remote Path:** this determines where Transmit navigates to upon connecting. You may put a bucket name (and subdirectory, if desired) here to connect directly to that location

Once you add the details, click the green **Connect** button to connect to Spaces. Transmit connects, then displays a list of your Spaces (if you left the **Remote Path** option blank).

If you have not yet created a bucket, this is empty. In the above screenshot we have one bucket called **example-name**. Let’s use Transmit to make a bucket next.

## Create a New Bucket

To create a new bucket with Transmit 5, first move to the root directory where all your buckets are listed. You can do this by clicking the `____.digitaloceanspaces.com` item all the way on the left of the breadcrumb trail at the top of the right-hand pane.

Once you’ve done that, click the **File** menu, then choose **New Bucket…**.

A window opens asking for a bucket name and location.

Choose any name that fits the guidelines mentioned in the dialog. Leave the default **Location** value as is. Click **Create** and your new bucket is 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 gives an error. If this happens, try another name.

Next, we’ll navigate into our new bucket and add some files.

## Create Some Content in Your Bucket

Double-click 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. When you’ve found a suitable file to upload (pick something like a JPG or HTML file, so we can test in the browser), click and drag it from the left-hand pane to the right. It copies over to your bucket and shows up in the directory listing on the right-hand side.

You can also drag and drop files directly from the macOS Finder.

Next, we’ll test permissions and learn how to make files publicly accessible.

## Adjust Permissions and Test Public Access

By default, the files in your buckets are not made available to the public. Let’s find the public URL for a file and see what happens when we try to load it in a web browser. In the right-hand pane, after navigating to your bucket, clickce on a file you’d like to view. This selects the file. Then click the **Edit** menu and select **Copy URL**. The URL is copied to your clipboard. Alternately, you can right-click the item and select **Copy URL** from the contextual menu.

Switch over to your browser, paste the URL into the location bar, and hit `ENTER`. An **AccessDenied** error loads.

To remedy this, we need to change the **Read** permissions on this file. Back in Transmit, with the file still selected, use the **File** menu to choose **Get Info** (you could also use a right-click here). Depending on your settings, a panel slides out of the current window, or a new window opens. Either are labeled **Inspector** and have more details about the file, including its size, location, type, and **Read** and **Write** permissions.

Use the drop-down menu next to **Read:** to change the setting from **Owner** to **World**, then click the **Apply** button at the bottom of the Inspector.

Transmit updates the file’s permissions. Return to your browser and reload the URL we tried before. Your file should successfully load.