How to Download Files from Colab

Making it easy to download a file from Colab

Google Colab or “Colaboratory” is a product from Google research. Colab allows users to write and execute Python Code useful for Data Analysis or Machine Learning.

Google Colab is hosted on Jupyter Notebook so is easily accessible to users that are already familiar with Jupyter. A great advantage over Juptyer Notebook, Google Colab requires no set-up or install to use and provides free access to computing resource including GPU and RAM.

However, it does come with some differences, such as downloading files from Colab. Follow the guide below to learn exactly how to download files from Google Colab.

The below assumes you have a data frame which has been named as a file and assigned a type. This will most commonly be done via Pandas, for example: result.to_csv(‘example_file.csv’)

It also assumes you have mounted your Google drive in the Colab interface. If you have all this set up, read on for our guide on importing and downloading files on Colab.

How to download a file created in Google Colab workspace?

To download a file for Colab lib use, however, you will need to use the Google Chrome Browser. If you are using Firefox, then this won’t work.

from google.colab import files
import pandas as pd
result.to_csv('example_file.csv')
files.download('example_file.csv')

Once executed, this will download the file directly to your downloads.

How to add a file into Google Drive from Google Colab workspace?

Another function we can use is saving a Google Colab file to Google Drive, this can then be used in another script or downloaded by others in a shared drive.

from google.colab import files
import pandas as pd
result.to_csv('example_file.csv')
!cp example_file.csv "/content/drive/My Drive/"

Once executed this will download the file to your specified Google Drive location.

We love Google Colab for its ease of use and the fact it doesn’t stress out our own hardware. For more useful tips and advice on Python, follow our blog and subscribe to our mailing list.

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