# Run AWS on Your Laptop Without an AWS Account

AWS Emulator lets you try S3, SQS and DynamoDB on your own computer with local credentials. Amazon’s first SQS prototype took about 15 minutes. In the full walkthrough I use those three services to make gallery previews on my Mac. Comment AWS for the free setup guide.

[HTML](https://lukejbyrne.com/library/guides/poi2fnxdde4/)
Content language: en
Author: Luke Byrne
Video published: 2026-11-13
Guide published: 2026-11-13

[Watch the video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poi2fNxDDE4)
Video language: English

- [Download the setup guide, demo code and sample images (ZIP)](https://lukejbyrne.com/library/downloads/aws-emulator-setup.zip)

[Complete guide](https://lukejbyrne.com/library/guides/jva-w9ul3ss/index.md)

## Try the first preview

From the unzipped project folder, run python3 spare-computer/preview.py run/outputs/03-grid.png --out gallery-result. Open gallery-result/03-grid.jpg; the 1920 × 1080 original yields a 320 × 180 JPEG.

## The takeaway

EC2 can report an instance as running inside the emulator. Image processing starts when you launch a worker. Files you download to your computer survive stopping the emulator.

## Workflow resources

- [docs.aws.amazon.com](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emulator/latest/userguide/getting-started-docker.html)
- [docs.aws.amazon.com](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emulator/latest/userguide/point-sdk-to-emulator.html)
- [docs.aws.amazon.com](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/emulator/latest/userguide/security.html)
- [aboutamazon.com](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/how-autonomous-ai-agents-built-aws-emulator)

## Sources and limitations

This is a development setup. Stopping AWS Emulator clears the service data held in memory. The video used one physical Mac; a separate desktop and a speed comparison were outside the test.

[Original video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poi2fNxDDE4)