How to Download a Folder from Google Drive
Download a whole Google Drive folder to your computer as a zip file, with any Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides inside converted to Office formats.
Applies to: Google Drive on the web; app differences noted. Checked September 2026.
Drive downloads a folder by packing it into a zip file. You start it with one click and unzip the result on your computer.
Right-click the folder and choose Download
Open drive.google.com and find the folder in My Drive or Shared with me. Right-click it and click Download. If you are already inside the folder, click the arrow next to the folder name at the top of the page and choose Download from that menu instead.
Wait for the zip to build
A panel in the bottom-right corner shows the progress while Drive compresses the folder. Keep the tab open until it finishes. When the zip is ready, the browser saves it to its usual downloads location. Large folders are split into several zip files, each a couple of gigabytes, and the browser may ask permission to download multiple files.
Unzip it on your computer
On a Mac, double-click the zip file in Finder to extract a folder next to it. On Windows, right-click the zip and choose Extract All. The extracted folder keeps the same subfolder structure it had in Drive. If the download came as several zips, extract each one; they contain different parts of the folder.
Check the converted files
Google's own file types have no native file format, so Drive converts them during the download: Docs become Word files (.docx), Sheets become Excel files (.xlsx), and Slides become PowerPoint files (.pptx). Complex formatting and some formulas may change slightly in the conversion. Google Forms are not included in the download. Everything else, such as PDFs, images, and videos, downloads exactly as stored.
Very large folders. Zipping tens of gigabytes through the browser is slow and can fail partway. Install Drive for desktop, sign in, and set the folder to Mirror files so it syncs to a real folder on your disk with no zipping. For a complete export of your account, including every folder, use Google Takeout at takeout.google.com, which packages everything and emails you the download links.
In the mobile app. The Android and iPhone apps download individual files, not folders. Open the folder, tap the three dots next to a file, and choose Download or Send a copy. For a whole folder, use the website on a computer.