How to temporarily switch profiles for AWS CLI?

Question

Updated answer (7/10/2021): For AWS CLI v1, do this:

export AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE=user2

For AWS CLI v2, the following will work:

export AWS_PROFILE=user2

The full question is below for context:

---

(1.) After successfully configuring a second profile for the AWS CLI, I unsuccessfully tried to set the profile to user2 in my bash session with the following command:

export AWS_PROFILE=user2

... per the advice here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-multiple-profiles.html

(2.) The following command works:

aws s3 ls --profile user2

So I know that the AWS CLI and the user2 profile are both working on my computer.

(3.) However, when I subsequently (that is, after entering "export AWS_PROFILE=user2") try something like:

aws s3 ls

... AWS's response assumes that I want to query it as the default user (NOT user2)

(4.) So the only way I can use the user2 profile from the command line is by continuing to append "--profile user2" to every single command, which is tedious.

(5.)

echo $AWS_PROFILE

yields:

>> user2

, as expected.

Any idea what's going on here? I'm sure I'm making some dumb mistake somewhere.

Answer 1

For AWS CLI v1, the cleanest solution is:

export AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE=user2

Afterward, commands like:

aws s3 ls

... are handled from the appropriate account.

For AWS CLI v2, the following will work:

export AWS_PROFILE=user2

Answer 2

The accepted answer assumes you are using a Linux or Mac terminal. I added commands for Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

Windows

CMD

set AWS_PROFILE=profile_name

Powershell

$env:AWS_PROFILE = 'profile_name'

Linux or Mac

export AWS_PROFILE=profile_name

These will set your aws profile that you will use every time you execute an aws command. But if you just want to switch profile temporarily for one aws command.

aws [command] [sub-command] --profile [profile-name]