Every time I've needed to poke around an Azure storage account, the instinct is to reach for the Azure Portal click into Storage Accounts, drill down into containers, wait for each page to load. It works, but it's built for occasional checks, not for someone who's in and out of a storage account several times a day. Azure Storage Explorer exists because that workflow gets old fast once you're doing it more than once a day. It's a free desktop app that gives you a proper file-browser-style view of blob containers, queues, tables, and file shares, and once it's connected to something, it feels far closer to using a normal file manager than clicking through a web console.
I went through the full setup on my own Windows machine installing it, connecting it to a real Azure subscription, and separately testing the shared access signature (SAS) connection method, since that's the option you'd reach for when you want to hand someone scoped access without giving them your full account. Both paths end up at the same tree view once they're connected, but getting there looks different enough that it's worth walking through both rather than picking just one.
What surprised me most going in wasn't any single feature it was how much the app quietly assumes you already know your way around Azure's storage model. Containers, blobs, and shared access signatures aren't explained anywhere in the interface; it expects you to already know what those are and just wants to get out of your way once you do. That's fine if you've worked with Azure Storage before, but it means the real learning curve here is conceptual, not about the app itself. Once the vocabulary clicks, the interface stops being the obstacle.
Before You Start: What You'll Need
A working Azure subscription is the main prerequisite the free-tier subscription Microsoft offers new accounts is enough to follow along, and creating a storage account on it costs next to nothing at the volumes you'd use for testing. Beyond that, the app itself runs on Windows, macOS, or Linux, so the only other real requirement is a stable internet connection for the initial sign-in and for anything you upload or download afterward.
If you don't have a subscription set up yet and just want to see how the app behaves first, it's worth knowing there's a local alternative the Azurite emulator, which I cover near the end of this piece but the steps below assume you're connecting to an actual Azure account, since that's the path most people end up on once they're doing real work rather than just kicking the tires.
Step 1: Download and Install the App
The installer comes straight from Microsoft's own download page search 'Azure Storage Explorer download' and it's the first result, with separate builds listed for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Grab the one that matches your machine and let it finish downloading before opening it.
Running the installer drops you into a short setup wizard. The first real choice it asks you to make is the installation mode install for your user account only, or install it for every account on the machine. For a personal machine, the single-user option is the sensible default; the all-users option only really matters on a shared workstation where more than one person needs the app available. After that comes a standard license agreement screen, which you'll need to accept before the Install button becomes clickable.
On a machine that doesn't already have it, the installer will pause partway through to ask about installing the .NET 8 runtime, which Storage Explorer needs to actually run. This isn't optional if the prompt appears, it means the runtime genuinely isn't present yet, so accept it and let that install finish before the main installation continues. It added a couple of extra minutes on my machine, which is worth knowing going in so it doesn't look like the installer has stalled.
From there it's the usual next-next-finish pattern: confirm the install location (the default is fine unless you have a specific reason to change it), let the progress bar run, and finish on a screen with a 'Launch Azure Storage Explorer' box already checked. Leave that checked and click Finish, and the app opens straight into an empty interface, ready to be connected to something.
Step 2: Connect With a Full Azure Account
This is the more common path if the storage account is yours, or belongs to a team you're already a member of. In the left-hand panel, right-click Storage Accounts and choose Connect to Azure Storage, then select Subscription from the options that appear that tells the app you want to sign in and pull in everything your account has access to, rather than pointing it at one specific resource.
Confirm Azure as the environment (this only changes if you're working with a government or sovereign cloud instance, which most people never touch) and click Next. That opens a normal browser-based sign-in enter your Azure credentials the same way you would logging into the portal directly. Once it confirms you're authenticated, you can close that browser tab and return to Storage Explorer.
Back in the app, your account and every subscription attached to it now shows up under account management. Select the subscription you want to work with and click Open Explorer, then expand it in the tree to see the storage accounts underneath. One detail that tripped me up briefly: When you sign in with a full Subscription, all storage accounts under that subscription automatically populate under Storage Accounts > (Subscription Name) in the tree view. You do not strictly need to perform a second "Connect" action unless you are attaching via SAS, Account Key, or Connection String. Adjusting this wording will avoid confusing new users.
Step 3: Or Connect With a Shared Access Signature URL
The SAS route is the one to reach for when you want scoped, temporary access instead of full account sign-in handing a URL to a contractor, or connecting from a machine where you don't want to leave a full Azure session logged in. It takes an extra step because you have to generate that URL in the Azure Portal first, but the tradeoff is that whoever's using it only gets exactly the access you've defined, for exactly as long as you've allowed.
From the Azure Portal, open the storage account in question, expand Security + networking, and click Shared access signature. You'll see a form for scoping the token: which services it covers (Blob, File, Queue, Table for most cases you only need Blob), which resource types it applies to (Service, Container, and Object cover almost every scenario), and the permissions and expiry window. Leave the defaults in place if you're just testing, but for anything real, it's worth deliberately narrowing both the permissions and the expiry rather than accepting whatever the form pre-fills.
Click Generate SAS and connection string, and the portal produces several values at once a connection string, a SAS token on its own, and a full Blob service SAS URL. It's the Blob service SAS URL you want here; copy it.
Back in Storage Explorer, start the same Connect to Azure Storage flow as before, but this time choose 'Shared access signature (SAS) URL' instead of Subscription. Give the connection a name you'll recognize later, paste the URL into the Service URL field, and click through to Connect.
Once it connects, the resources tied to that SAS token show up in the tree exactly the way a full account connection would the difference is entirely in how you got there and what you're allowed to do once you're in, not in what the interface looks like afterward.
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Step 4: Browse What You've Connected To
With either connection method in place, expand the storage account and then Blob Containers to see what's actually in it. Clicking into a container lists everything inside in my case that meant a couple of HTML files and an image sitting in a container I'd set up earlier for a different test, which was a useful sanity check that the connection was actually pulling live data rather than just confirming credentials.
From this point everything is the same regardless of which connection method got you here: right-click to upload, download, generate a fresh SAS for an individual blob, or check a file's properties. The connection method only gates what you're allowed to touch the browsing and management experience on top of it doesn't change.
No Subscription Yet? Use the Local Azurite Emulator Instead
If you want to get a feel for the app before setting up billing on a real subscription, Azurite is Microsoft's official local emulator and it's genuinely the same interface with none of the account setup. Install it through npm if you've got Node.js available:
Bash
npm install -g azurite
azurite Leave that terminal running, then in Storage Explorer choose Connect to Azure Storage and pick 'Local storage emulator' instead of Subscription or SAS URL. Accept the default ports, and you'll land on the same Blob Containers, Queues, Tables, and File Shares tree as a real account just pointed at your own machine instead of the cloud. Where to Go From Here
Between installing the app, connecting a real account two different ways, and browsing what's inside, that covers the setup work you'd only otherwise have to figure out by trial and error. The app has plenty more under the surface queue message management, table entity editing, Azure Data Lake support but you won't need most of it until you're doing something specific enough to know why. Everything else in the interface follows the same tree-view-plus-right-click pattern covered here, which is by far the most useful thing about learning the tool once instead of relearning it per resource type.
