GitHub itself does not support downloading a single file or folder, but there are several ways to do this. Compared to downloading a folder, downloading a file is more easier. You can download a file in a direct way. But the methods that used to download a folder apply to downloading a file as well. If this is a usual requirement, using Subversion is a recommended way.
Download a single file from a GitHub repo
Download a file with its raw URL.
Browser to the file on GitHub you are want to download, right click the raw button to get its rawURL. Use curl command line tool or something like that to download the file:
# Download a file and write it to a file
$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/[username]/[repo-name]/[branch-name]/[file-path]/somefile.js > my-named-file.js
# Other usages
# Use -o to specifiy the output file name
$ curl -o my-named-file.js https://raw.githubusercontent.com/[username]/[repo-name]/[branch-name]/[file-path]/somefile.js
# Use -O to specify the file name in the end of the URL as the output file
$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/[username]/[repo-name]/[branch-name]/[file-path]/somefile.js
# Download multiple files
$ curl –O [URL1] –O [URL2]
# Download with a proxy
$ curl -x [proxysever.test.com:3128] -O [URL]
Download a single folder from a GitHub repo
1. Use DownGit for temporary usage
If this is a temporary usage and you have not installed Subversion, DownGit is a good option to do this. This tool uses GitHub’s REST API to achieve that.
It’s super easy to use:
Go to DownloadGit, input the URL of the file or folder you want to download like https://github.com/gloomic/phaser-flappy-bird/tree/main/screenshots, click Download button.
It looks like:
DownGit
Create GitHub Resource Download Link
It also provides a option to let you to create a download link.
2. Use Subversion for usual usage
Although GitHub does not support git-archive, but it supports some Subversion features that we can use to download a file or a folder. If you have not Subversion installed, install it (For Windows, just install TortoiseSVN).
You need to change the URL to a file or folder, replace tree/[branch] with trunk:
$ svn export https://github.com/gloomic/phaser-flappy-bird/trunk/screenshots