Downloading a git file

Last Updated: October 21, Tested. This article was co-authored by Luigi Oppido. Luigi has over 25 years of experience in general computer repair, data recovery, virus removal, and upgrades. He is also the host of the Computer Man Show! The wikiHow Tech Team also followed the article's instructions and verified that they work. This article has been viewed 71, times. This wikiHow teaches you how to download a GitHub folder by downloading an entire repository.

GitHub allows you to download a repo locally to your computer with just a few simple steps. Please note that downloading a specific folder from within a repo requires some more advanced work, and this is designed to be a quick and easy workaround for GitHub beginners. Navigate to GitHub. Find the repo you want to download. Click the green Clone or Download button. Click Download ZIP. Did this summary help you?

Yes No. Log in Social login does not work in incognito and private browsers. Please log in with your username or email to continue. No account yet? Create an account. Edit this Article. GitHub lets you download one file from a repository. This is a useful feature because it means you do not have to clone or retrieve an entire repository to download a particular file. You cannot retrieve a single file using the git command line , even if your repository is hosted on GitHub.

To download an individual file from a repository, first navigate to the file you want to download on the GitHub website. Now that we are viewing a plain-text version of our file, we can save it like we would with any web resource.

Press Ctrl-S or Cmd-S for Windows and Mac, respectively, and choose where you want to save the file that you are viewing. Get matched to a bootcamp today. The average bootcamp grad spent less than six months in career transition, from starting a bootcamp to finding their first job.

We do not need the web interface to view the raw version of a file. We can manually write the URL of the file we want to retrieve. We can use this format to retrieve any file from our Git archive, such as a HTML file or a markdown file. We could download a file called app. This method works on both plain text and binary files. This approach only works for files that are public. This is because the web interface provides an access token that you need to view a private file.

We can download a single file from the command line using the wget command. This is because we can write the URL for the file we want to retrieve. Like the last approach, you can only download a single file using wget if that file is public.

The -L flag instructs wget to retrieve only the file that we have specified. Choose the terminal emulator you want to use. The default MinTTY is recommended, for its features.

The installer now asks what the git pull command should do. The default option is recommended unless you specifically need to change its behavior.

Click Next to continue with the installation. Next you should choose which credential helper to use. Git uses credential helpers to fetch or save credentials. Leave the default option as it is the most stable one, and click Next. The default options are recommended, however this step allows you to decide which extra option you would like to enable.

If you use symbolic links, which are like shortcuts for the command line, tick the box. At the time this article was written, the options to include support for pseudo controls and a built-in file system monitor were offered. Unless you are feeling adventurous, leave them unchecked and click Install.

Git has two modes of use — a bash scripting shell or command line and a graphical user interface GUI. To launch Git Bash open the Windows Start menu, type git bash and press Enter or click the application icon. Go to your repository on GitHub. In the top right above the list of files, open the Clone or download drop-down menu. For that option to work, you must generate an SSH key pair on your Windows workstation and assign the public key to your GitHub account.

Your working directory should now have a copy of the repository from GitHub. It should contain a directory with the name of the project. Change to the directory:. Now check the status of your new Git branch and untracked files:.