GitHub is one of the largest developer resources, and an absolute must-know for aspiring web developers to explore and share projects online.
If you’re just starting out with git and GitHub, taking open-source code from GitHub to experiment with or add to your own projects is one great way to learn or develop your own apps. You can even connect your GitHub repository to your preferred hosting to deploy and test your apps. To do that, you’ll need to learn the basics: getting a file from GitHub onto your computer.
In this post, we’ll show you how to download different resources from GitHub. We’ll cover:
Let’s get started.
How to Download a File From GitHub
To download a single file from GitHub, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to the GitHub repository page that contains the file. If it’s a public repository, you can visit the page without logging in. If it’s a private repository, you’ll need to log in and have the proper permissions to access it.
2. From the main repository page, locate the file you want to download. You can do this by navigating the folders, or by clicking Go to File near the top of the page. This opens a list of all files in the repository that you can search.
3. Click the file you want to download. This will open the file in GitHub.
4. On the file page, click the Raw button. This opens the raw code in your browser.
5. Right-click the page and select Save as…, then name the file and choose where to save it on your device.
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How to Download a GitHub Repository
GitHub is made up of repositories. A repository is a place where all files in a project can be stored, accessed, tracked, and modified. To download a repository, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to the GitHub repository page. If it’s a public repository, you can visit the page without logging in. If it’s a private repository, you’ll need to log in and have the proper permissions to access it.
2. On the main repository page, click the green Code button.
3. In the menu that appears, click Download ZIP. The entire repository will be downloaded to your device as a zipped file.
With that, you should be able to open the file locally.
How to Download a Release From GitHub
Repositories may also put out releases, which are packaged versions of the project. To download a release:
1. Navigate to the GitHub repository page. If it’s a public repository, you can visit the page without logging in. If it’s a private repository, you’ll need to log in and have the proper permissions to access it.
2. Click Releases, located on the right-side panel.
3. You’ll be brought to a page listing releases from newest to oldest. Under the release that you want to download, locate the Assets section. Click a file under this section to download it.
You’ll be able to open this zipped file on your local device.
How to Download Multiple Files From GitHub
Unless you want to download an entire repository or release, there’s currently no way to bulk-download multiple files from GitHub. Depending on how many files you need from a repository, it may be best to download each individual file you need, or download the entire repository/release and delete the files you don’t need.
Get files from GitHub.
There’s a lot to learn when it comes to using GitHub — the platform packs a ton of features, and it can seem intimidating to newcomers. However, GitHub does an excellent job of making its tools simple and accessible. Case in point: downloading a single file or an entire repository is possible with just a few clicks.
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50 Free Coding Templates
Free code snippet templates for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript -- Plus access to GitHub.
-
Navigation Menus & Breadcrumbs Templates
-
Button Transition Templates
-
CSS Effects Templates
-
And more!
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Releases are deployable software iterations you can package and make available for a wider audience to download and use.
Releases are based on Git tags, which mark a specific point in your repository's history. A tag date may be different than a release date since they can be created at different times. For more information about viewing your existing tags, see "Viewing your repository's releases and tags."
You can receive notifications when new releases are published in a repository without receiving notifications about other updates to the repository. For more information, see "Viewing your subscriptions."
Anyone with read access to a repository can view and compare releases, but only people with write permissions to a repository can manage releases. For more information, see "Managing releases in a repository."
You can manually create release notes while managing a release. Alternatively, you can automatically generate release notes from a default template, or customize your own release notes template. For more information, see "Automatically generated release notes."
When viewing the details for a release, the creation date for each release asset is shown next to the release asset.
GitHub will automatically include links to download a zip file and a tarball containing the contents of the repository at the point of the tag's creation.
People with admin permissions to a repository can choose whether Git Large File Storage (Git LFS) objects are included in the ZIP files and tarballs that GitHub creates for each release. For more information, see "Managing Git LFS objects in archives of your repository."
If a release fixes a security vulnerability, you should publish a security advisory in your repository. GitHub reviews each published security advisory and may use it to send Dependabot alerts to affected repositories. For more information, see "About repository security advisories."
You can view the Dependents tab of the dependency graph to see which repositories and packages depend on code in your repository, and may therefore be affected by a new release. For more information, see "About the dependency graph."
You can also use the Releases API to gather information, such as the number of times people download a release asset. For more information, see "REST API endpoints for releases and release assets."
Each file included in a release must be under 2 GiB. There is no limit on the total size of a release, nor bandwidth usage.