Configuring Payload Cloud’s S3: Is cloud plugin enough for local dev and auto-setup in production?

[quartz mantle]

Hi all! I’m struggling to find documentation on how to set up the S3 File Storage that comes with Payload Cloud. The official templates and npx create-payload-app only mention MongoDB setup, but nothing specific about integrating Payload Cloud’s built-in S3 storage.

I’m unsure if I need to worry about configuring S3 locally at all. My thought was that simply adding @payloadcms/payload-cloud would handle everything—letting me develop locally without S3 setup hassles and then automatically connecting to Payload Cloud’s S3 for all media files once deployed. Does it work this way out of the box, or do I need to manually configure Payload Cloud’s S3 for local dev to ensure it runs smoothly in production?

[tulip nacelle]

New Community-Help Thread Created!

Help is on the way! To mark it as solved, use the /solve command. In the meantime, here are some existing threads that may help you:

Documentation:

• Production Deployment - File storage - Using cloud storage providers
• Local API - Accessing Payload - Importing it
• Cloud Projects - File Storage
• Migrations - When to run migrations - Postgres
• Preventing Production API Abuse - Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

[sacred tulip]

Are you using payload cloud? If not than this is just a placeholder plugin. You would want to use one of the storage adapter plugins: https://payloadcms.com/docs/upload/storage-adapters

[quartz mantle]

I will be publishing the build to Payload Cloud once I finish the project in my local development environment, and right now I’m trying to figure out what I need to do to make the project use the S3 File Storage provided with Payload Cloud. According to the documentation, storage adapters are required when the project needs to interact with external storage (AWS, Supabase, or any other), and they are not suitable for Payload Cloud.