Metadata Editor

The metadata editor lets you read and update the HTTP headers and custom key/value pairs attached to an object. This is useful for correcting content types, setting cache directives, and adding application-specific metadata without re-uploading the object.

Viewing object metadata

Click any file row in the file browser to open the Details panel on the right. The panel displays:

Field	Description
Key	The full object key (path within the bucket)
Visibility	Public or private ACL status
Size	Object size, formatted
Content type	The Content-Type header
Last modified	Timestamp of the last modification
Storage class	Storage class reported by S3 (e.g. STANDARD)
ETag	The object ETag
Custom metadata	Any x-amz-meta-* key/value pairs, listed below the system fields

Editing metadata

1. Click a file row to open the Details panel.
2. Click the Edit metadata… button (tag icon) in the panel toolbar.
3. The Edit metadata dialog loads the current values from the object.

System headers

Three standard HTTP headers are editable:

• Content-Type — the MIME type served when the object is accessed (e.g. image/png, application/pdf).
• Cache-Control — caching directives for clients and CDNs (e.g. max-age=86400, public).
• Content-Disposition — controls browser download behavior (e.g. attachment; filename="report.pdf").

Leave a field empty to clear the header from the object.

Custom metadata

Below the system headers is a Custom metadata section. Each row has a key field and a value field. S3 stores these as x-amz-meta-<key> headers.

• Click Add field to add a new row.
• Click the trash icon on a row to remove it.
• Keys must be unique within the dialog; saving with a duplicate key shows an error and does not save.

Saving

Click Save metadata. S3 Manager issues a server-side copy of the object to itself with MetadataDirective: REPLACE, which atomically replaces all metadata headers with the new values while keeping the object data unchanged.

Note

Because metadata is updated via a copy-to-self operation, the object’s ETag and Last modified timestamp change after saving — even if only one header was edited. Storage class, content encoding, and content language are preserved from the original object.

Clearing a header

To clear a system header (Content-Type, Cache-Control, or Content-Disposition), delete the text in the field and save. An empty field is not sent in the copy request, which removes that header.