Manage default and custom key pairs for your Lightsail instances

You can establish a secure connection to your Amazon Lightsail instances using key pairs. When you first create an instance, you can choose to use a key pair that Lightsail creates for you (the Lightsail default key pair) or a custom key pair that you create.

If you use the default key pair, you can download the private key for safekeeping. This can be done either at the time you create your instance or later. If you choose to download the key after you created your instance, you can do so under SSH keys on the Lightsail Account page.

On Linux/Unix instances, the private key allows you to establish a secure SSH connection to your instance. On Windows instances, the private key decrypts the default administrator password that you use to establish a secure RDP connection to your instance.

With the following topics, you'll learn how to view, download, and delete existing keys, and create or upload new keys that you can use with your Lightsail instances.