AWS Console interface has changed over the years. One of the features I loved when I started as a newbie using AWS was the capability to pin AWS services that I use regularly.
One of the challenges as a newbie to AWS is remembering service names. AWS has over 200 fully-featured services. You can search for a service using the search bar or via the services drop-down box. However, that is hardly efficient if you plan on using multiple services regularly.
When I first started using the AWS console, the main services I was regularly using were EC2, Cloudwatch, S3, API Gateway, and CloudFront. In the beginning, before I found out about the pin option, I would search for each of these services and then navigate to the appropriate dashboard. This process was time-consuming. It become bit more annoying when I had to navigate to other services too.
To help improve usability, AWS provided the capability to drag, drop and pin the most used service in the navigation bar. This meant when I logged in next time, the services were already available in the navigation bar and I didn't have to search for them. That made my life easy. I would pin the services I plan on using regularly and the ones I didn't need, I would unpin them.
As of recent, I don't see that capability anymore. It has been replaced with a favorite option. Favorite perform the same functionality. Once you add the service to the favorite list, next time when you log into the console, you don't have to search for the service. It will show up in your favorite list.
Here is how to add the service to your favorite list.
So if you are new to AWS console and trying to learn your way around it, I highly recommend that you leverage the favorite option. This will help you in the short term access your most regularly used service quickly. Once you become comfortable then you can start using other options to navigate to different services.
Note: I have to say my personal preference is the pin over the favorite option. From a usability view, it was much simpler to access the service.
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