gdown

Google Drive public file/folder downloader when curl/wget fails.

Why?

Downloading public files from Google Drive with curl or wget doesn't work — Google serves a confirmation page for large files, and the URL formats are a mess.

gdown gets around that:

• Skips the virus-scan confirmation page so large downloads actually finish
• Downloads folders recursively
• Exports Google Docs/Sheets/Slides as PDF, DOCX, CSV, etc.
• Resumes partial downloads with --continue
• Also works with plain HTTP/HTTPS URLs as a curl/wget replacement

Install

Requires Python 3.10 or later.

pip install gdown

Or with uv:

uv tool install gdown

Quick start

# Just paste a Google Drive URL
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ

# Or copy-paste a share link directly
gdown 'https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9P1L--7Wd2vU3VUVlFnbTgtS2c/view?usp=sharing'

Usage

CLI

Files

# Download by URL
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ

# Download by file ID
gdown 1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ

# Download from a share link
gdown 'https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9P1L--7Wd2vU3VUVlFnbTgtS2c/view?usp=sharing'

# Save to a specific path
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B9P1L--7Wd2vU3VUVlFnbTgtS2c -O /tmp/spam.txt

# Resolve the filename (with its real extension) without downloading
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B9P1L--7Wd2vU3VUVlFnbTgtS2c --json

--json is in beta and its output format may change in a future release; pass --quiet to silence the beta warning in scripts. The output is an array of {url, path} entries, where path is the filename Google Drive reports. This lets you choose a name while keeping the original extension:

url="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B9P1L--7Wd2vU3VUVlFnbTgtS2c"
filename=$(gdown "$url" --json | jq -r '.[0].path')
gdown "$url" -O "my_name.${filename##*.}"

Folders

# Download an entire folder
gdown https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15uNXeRBIhVvZJIhL4yTw4IsStMhUaaxl -O /tmp/folder

# List folder contents as a JSON array (each entry has url and path)
gdown https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15uNXeRBIhVvZJIhL4yTw4IsStMhUaaxl --json

# Filter by path and download matches
gdown https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15uNXeRBIhVvZJIhL4yTw4IsStMhUaaxl --json \
  | jq -r '.[] | select(.path | test("shad")) | .url' \
  | xargs -n1 gdown

Folder URLs are detected automatically. A bare folder ID still requires --folder because file and folder IDs have the same format.

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides

# Download a Google Slides file (default: pptx)
gdown "https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15umvZKlsJ3094HNg5S4vJsIhxcFlyTeK/edit?usp=sharing"

# Export as PDF instead
gdown "https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15umvZKlsJ3094HNg5S4vJsIhxcFlyTeK/edit" --format pdf

Default export formats: Docs → docx, Sheets → xlsx, Slides → pptx.

Resume, speed limit, proxy

# Resume a partially downloaded file
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --continue

# Limit download speed
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --speed 10MB

# Download via proxy
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --proxy http://proxy:8080

# Give up when the server sends nothing for 30 seconds
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --timeout 30

Other options

# Skip TLS certificate verification
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --no-check-certificate

# Download as your signed-in Google account, reusing your browser's cookies
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --cookies-from-browser firefox

# Read and save cookies in a file other than ~/.cache/gdown/cookies.txt
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --cookies ./cookies.txt

# Don't read or save cookies
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --no-cookies

# Use a custom User-Agent
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ --user-agent "MyApp/1.0"

Pipe to stdout

gdown https://github.com/wkentaro/gdown/archive/refs/tags/v4.0.0.tar.gz -O - --quiet | tar zxvf -

Any URL

gdown also works with regular URLs, not just Google Drive:

gdown https://httpbin.org/ip -O ip.json

[!NOTE] For Google Drive URLs, gdown automatically extracts the file ID and downloads the actual file. Use curl or wget to download the raw HTML page instead.

Python

import gdown

# Download a file
url = "https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1l_5RK28JRL19wpT22B-DY9We3TVXnnQQ"
gdown.download(url=url, output="fcn8s_from_caffe.npz")

# Download by file ID
gdown.download(id="0B9P1L--7Wd2vNm9zMTJWOGxobkU", output="output.npz")

# Download from a share link
url = "https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9P1L--7Wd2vNm9zMTJWOGxobkU/view?usp=sharing"
gdown.download(url=url, output="output.npz")

# Download with hash verification and caching
gdown.cached_download(
    url=url,
    path="output.npz",
    hash="md5:fa837a88f0c40c513d975104edf3da17",
    postprocess=gdown.extractall,
)

# Track download progress
def on_progress(bytes_so_far: int, bytes_total: int | None) -> None:
    if bytes_total is not None:
        print(f"\r{bytes_so_far / bytes_total * 100:.1f}%", end="")

gdown.download(url=url, output="output.npz", quiet=True, progress=on_progress)

# Download a folder
url = "https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15uNXeRBIhVvZJIhL4yTw4IsStMhUaaxl"
gdown.download_folder(url=url)

# Download a folder by ID
gdown.download_folder(id="15uNXeRBIhVvZJIhL4yTw4IsStMhUaaxl")

FAQ

"Permission Denied" error

Make sure the file sharing is set to "Anyone with the link".

Download still fails even with "Anyone with the link"

Google throttles downloads when too many people access the same file, but lets a signed-in account through. If you can still open the file in your browser, reuse that browser's cookies:

gdown --cookies-from-browser firefox https://drive.google.com/uc?id=FILE_ID

Supported browsers: brave, chrome, chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari, vivaldi, whale. gdown saves the cookies to ~/.cache/gdown/cookies.txt, so later runs need no flag. That file then holds your whole google.com session, Gmail and Account included, so treat it like a password. To revoke it, delete the file and sign out of Google in that browser.

Platform notes:

• Linux Chromium-family browsers using GNOME Keyring require secretstorage in gdown's Python environment. Install with pip install 'gdown[secretstorage]' or run uvx --from 'gdown[secretstorage]' gdown --cookies-from-browser chrome URL. Firefox needs no extra dependency.
• macOS asks for your login password once to unlock the Chromium-family keychain entry; Firefox needs nothing.
• Windows Chrome 127+ encrypts cookies so other programs cannot read them. Use Firefox there.
• Safari requires Full Disk Access for your terminal.

If none of that works, export a Netscape cookies.txt with a browser extension such as Get cookies.txt LOCALLY and pass it with --cookies cookies.txt. gdown rewrites that file while resolving each Google Drive file, whether or not it downloads it.

Download stops after ~1 hour

Google Drive terminates connections after approximately 1 hour for large files. Use --continue to reuse earlier partial downloads and skip completed files. Add --retries N for up to N automatic retries per file after a transient connection failure, timeout, or incomplete transfer:

gdown --continue --retries 3 https://drive.google.com/uc?id=<file_id>
gdown --continue --retries 3 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/<folder_id>

Retries default to zero and use exponential backoff with jitter, capped at 30 seconds. Retries resume the current transfer automatically; --continue controls whether earlier downloads are reused. Python callers can pass retries=3 to download, download_folder, or cached_download.

Retries require a filesystem destination; stdout and file-like outputs are not supported. Folder discovery and --json do not retry. If a server refuses the requested byte range, gdown stops that file and preserves the partial download. When a file exhausts its retries in a folder, remaining files are attempted and failures are reported at the end. Permission/quota errors and cancellation are not retried.

Can I use gdown for non-Google-Drive URLs?

Yes. It works with any public HTTP/HTTPS URL.

Contributing

Install just 1.58.0 or newer and uv. Recipes use Bash; on Windows, install Git for Windows and make its Bash available on PATH.

git clone https://github.com/wkentaro/gdown.git
cd gdown
just setup   # install dependencies
just test    # run tests
just lint    # run linters

License

MIT (LICENSE)