How to Download Files From GitHub: Three Easy Steps

Want to learn how to download files from GitHub? Here's how.

John Savill

February 11, 2017

1 Min Read
How to download GitHub files
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Question: How do I download files from GitHub?

Answer: Today, more and more code is stored in GitHub. But for non-developers it can be confusing to understand how to actually get content and download files from GitHub.

I recently needed to download the VMM SDN Express scripts from https://github.com/Microsoft/SDN/tree/master/VMM/VMM%20SDN%20Express. However, that page has no obvious download button. Yes, each individual file can be viewed and its content copy-pasted to a local file, but that's not the best or most efficient solution.

To easily download multiple files from GitHub, you should take the following three steps:

  1. Navigate to the top-level of the project (SDN in this case) or the specific repository you want to download.

  2. Click the green "Code" download button on the top-level page.

  3. Select the "Download ZIP" option from the "Code" pull-down menu.

As a result, the downloaded ZIP file will contain the entire GitHub repository content, including the files you wanted. For additional step-by-step instruction for getting started with GitHub, check out this video from ITPro Today's YouTube channel:

 

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