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Browse Firebase Storage files

See your project's Cloud Storage buckets in Firetool: folders, file details and previews, and download, upload or delete files. You need a Google account with access to the project's Storage.

Browsing and previews work in the Free edition. Downloading, uploading and deleting need Pro.

Open Storage

  1. In the sidebar, expand your account and the project.
  2. Choose Storage, under Authentication. It opens in its own tab.
  3. If the project has more than one bucket, pick one at the top. Firebase's own bucket (project-id.firebasestorage.app or project-id.appspot.com) comes first.

Storage works with real projects. The Storage emulator isn't supported yet.

Folders and files

  • Click a folder to open it; the path at the top takes you back. ↩ Up goes up one level.
  • Files show their size, type and when they last changed. The status bar adds up the files in the folder.
  • Filter this folder narrows the list by name. Load more files appears when a folder has more than 500.

A file's details and preview

Click a file to see its details beside the list: size, type, storage class, MD5 and any custom metadata. Images and text files up to a few megabytes show a preview. Copy gs:// path copies its Cloud Storage path; files uploaded through Firebase also have Copy download URL, the address your app's users get.

Download

Choose Download… in a file's details and pick where to save it. Downloading takes data out of the project, so it follows the export rules: it needs Pro, a project's policy can turn exports off, and every download goes in the audit log.

Upload

  1. Open the folder to upload into.
  2. Choose Upload… and pick one or more files, up to 200 MB each.
  3. A file with the same name in the folder is replaced, after Firetool asks.

Delete

Tick files in the list and choose Delete, or use Delete in a file's details. If the bucket has soft delete turned on (Google Cloud's default, for 7 days) or keeps older versions, you can bring a file back; see below.

Bring back deleted files

  1. Open the folder the file was in and choose Show deleted.
  2. The list shows each deleted file, when it was deleted and how long the bucket still keeps it.
  3. Choose Restore beside a file. It comes back under its own name.

If the list is empty, the bucket's soft delete is off or the time has passed. A restore is a change: it follows the same rules as an upload and goes in the audit log.

Older versions of a file

When a bucket has object versioning turned on, it keeps a file's earlier versions each time it's replaced. Choose Versions… in a file's details to list them with their size and date, and Restore to make one the current version again. Without versioning, Firetool says that only the current version is kept.

Copy files to another bucket

  1. Tick the files to copy, or tick none to copy the folder you are in (with its subfolders), and choose Copy to….
  2. Pick the project and bucket to copy to. Any project you can open in Firetool is listed, also under another account.
  3. Choose the folder to copy into (empty for the top of the bucket), then Copy.

Google Cloud copies the files from bucket to bucket; nothing is downloaded to your computer. A copy is a change to the target bucket, so it follows that project's rules and goes in the audit log.

Rules and the audit log

Uploads and deletes are changes, so they follow the same rules as Firestore data: a project marked read-only refuses them, a Viewer role can only browse, a production project asks for the project ID before deleting several files, and a reason is asked for when the policy says so. Every upload, delete and download is recorded in the audit log with the file's gs:// path.

Questions

Why can't I see any buckets?

Your Google account needs access to Cloud Storage in the project, for example the Storage Object Viewer role to browse, or Storage Object Admin to upload and delete. If the project has no bucket yet, open Storage in the Firebase console and choose Get started.

Does browsing Storage cost Firestore reads?

No. Listing files and previews are Cloud Storage requests, which Google bills separately from Firestore, and they don't count in the documents-read number in the status bar.