It’s not always obvious how to download files from the GitHub site, as anyone who has used it before would attest. Being intended for development rather than straight file sharing makes it one of the most difficult platforms. Granted, one of the great things about GitHub is that all of the public repositories are open source, and people are encouraged to contribute. There are also private repositories, but these are typically used for internal development within companies that don’t want their code to be made public. But unlike other locations, GitHub still has a unique approach to file downloads.
Github how to download files
So, if you’re not exactly sure how to download files from GitHub from projects, we’re going to show you how. Let’s begin.
- Open a web browser and go to https://github.com. Any web browser will work to download files.
- Locate the file you wish to download from github. Use the search box at the top of the page to find the file you want to download. The search results will display files that match your search.
- If Releases is an option, select it. This choice is located on the browser’s right side.
- You have the option to download the installer or the source code after clicking Releases.
If there are no releases available, go with these instructions to download a file.
- Click the (Go to file) button. Along with a hyperlink to download all the files, you can find this information above the list of files in this repository.
- Choose the file you wish to download by clicking. Your web browser will open it inside of GitHub.
- Click (Raw). This may be located next to Blame, and the file’s location will have a monitor icon over it.
- Instead of any GitHub headers, footers, or menus, the page will redirect to show the file contents.
- Click Save As from the context menu of the right-clicked page. Ctrl/CMD + S is another keyboard shortcut you have available.
- Your file manager will launch, allowing you to choose a name and location for the file’s storage.
- To download the full repository, head to the root (click the portion of the URL that is often before any /), click the button that has a download icon on it (it will typically say Code), and then select Download ZIP.