How to easily access CRX/DE after AEM 6.5.5+ upgrade (SP5)

If you are on AEM 6.5 and have upgraded to Service Pack 5 (AEM version 6.5.5) you might have noticed that you can no longer log in to AEM via CRX/DE

This change was implemented in the SP5 update and according to the CSE that our team worked with:

“The login and logout buttons have been removed on purpose from CRXDE for security reasons (internal ID: GRANITE-27790). Backported to AEM 6.5.5.0 as part NPR-33521.”

The workaround that the CSE suggested was to navigate to:

https://<IP>:<PORT>/libs/granite/core/content/login.html

login and then navigate to /crx/de
You can take that workaround a step further and navigate to
https://<IP>:<PORT>/libs/granite/core/content/login.html?resource=crx/de

the added resource=/crx/de param here is just the AEM param for redirect after authentication. Basically, after you log in, you’ll be redirected to /crx/de

That only works on Author instances, for Publish instances, you have to navigate to the package manager:

https://<IP>:<PORT>/crx/packmgr/index.jsp

login, then navigate to /crx/de