How to install the Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer on Linux

The Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer app is used to easily and comfortably manage your Azure storage resources from a Microsoft Windows PC, an Apple Mac, or a Linux PC.

Azure Storage Explorer has a lot to love for fans of the Microsoft Azure service, including the ability to upload, download, manage Azure blobs, manipulate files, access tables, as well as easy access to VMs, and databases. In this guide, we’ll show you how to get it working on Linux.

Snap package

Microsoft is a huge fan of sending out their latest software offerings in the form of Snap packages. It’s not hard to see why they’re such huge fans of Snaps though, as the technology is incredibly easy to set up on 75% of Linux computers and can work with anything from complex webserver apps for production, to small little tools like Discord or Telegram.

If you’d like to get Azure Storage Explorer up and running, you must be using a Linux PC that has support for Snaps. As of now, Snaps are supported on Ubuntu Linux, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Arch Linux, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Solus, and others.

Note: not running a Linux OS that has support for Snap packages but need to get the latest version of Azure Storage Explorer working? Consider switching to Ubuntu. It has Snap packages pre-configured, and no setup is required.

Installing Azure Storage Explorer via Snap

Getting the Snap version 0f Azure Storage Explorer working requires the Snapd runtime working. To enable the Snapd runtime, install the “snapd” package on your Linux computer. Then, enable the snapd.socket service with the systemd init system.

Having issues getting the Snapd runtime working on your Linux PC? Don’t understand how the systemd init system works? We can help! Follow along with this in-depth guide on how to enable the Snapd runtime on your Linux PC.

Once Snapd is up and running, use the snap install command to install the latest stable version of the Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer.

sudo snap install storage-explorer

Alternatively, if you like living on the edge, install the unstable version of the Azure Storage Explorer from the Snap Store by using the following snap install command.

sudo snap install storage-explorer --edge

Finally, when the Azure Storage Explorer app is done installing on your Linux PC, the process is not complete. You must finish up the process by connecting Azure Storage Explorer to the Gnome Keyring using the snap connect command.

 snap connect storage-explorer:password-manager-service :password-manager-service

When the snap connect command finishes, Azure Storage Explorer is connected to Gnome Keyring and will be able to run on your Linux PC.

Arch Linux

Microsoft has not released the Azure Storage Explorer on Arch Linux. However, people in the community have taken it upon themselves to create an unofficial AUR package to make the app work on Arch Linux. Here’s how to install it.

To start, use the Pacman command to install both the “Base-devel” and “Git” packages, which are required to interact with the AUR.

sudo pacman -S git base-devel

Following installing the “Git” and “Base-devel” packages, use the git clone command to download the Trizen AUR helper. It will make setting up the Azure Storage Explorer much easier.

git clone https://github.com/trizen/trizen

Install the Trizen AUR helper with the commands below.

cd trizen

makepkg -sri

Finally, with the Trizen AUR helper set up, use it to install the Azure Storage Explorer.

trizen -S azure-storage-explorer

Generic Linux installation

Aside from a Snap, Microsoft has released the Azure Storage Explorer as a generic, downloadable TarGZ archive. Here’s how to install it on your system.

First, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T. Then, with the terminal window open and ready to go, use the wget command to download the latest release of Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer from the internet.

Note: don’t want to download the Azure Storage Explorer archive from the terminal? Head over to Microsoft’s website, and download it there.

wget https://download.microsoft.com/download/A/E/3/AE32C485-B62B-4437-92F7-8B6B2C48CB40/StorageExplorer-linux-x64.tar.gz -O ~/Downloads/StorageExplorer-linux-x64.tar.gz

After downloading the TarGZ release of Azure Storage Explorer, use the CD command to move into the “Downloads” directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Using the mkdir command, create a folder with the label of “azure-storage-explorer” in the home directory (~).

mkdir -p ~/azure-storage-explorer

Use the tar command to extract the contents of the archive in the “Downloads” directory to the “azure-storage-explorer” in your home folder (~).

tar xvf StorageExplorer-linux-x64.tar.gz -C ~/azure-storage-explorer

With the files extracted, use the CD command to move your terminal window into the “azure-storage-explorer” directory.

cd ~/azure-storage-explorer

Once inside of the “azure-storage-explorer” directory, you will be able to launch the app with:

./StorageExplorer