Android downloads file location

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Crystal Crowder Crystal Crowder has spent over 15 years working in the tech industry, first as an IT technician and then as a writer. Comments 1. Facebook Tweet. One comment Coop. When Android first launched, finding files was especially cumbersome due to the fact that not every Android device came with a file manager app.

A lot has changed since then. Most Android devices now come with some sort of file manager preinstalled, and for those that don't, there's a better alternative anyway. Left: Files app on a Pixel 3. By far the easiest way to find downloaded files on Android is to look in your app drawer for an app called Files or My Files.

Regardless of which device, once you find and open the file manager, use it to look for the Downloads folder and open it. I looked for some hours - not an exhaustive search but how many hours are you going to look?! Rather than develop them myself, I found K-Box which provides "standard Linux utilities in a stock, non-rooted Android device" and which has its main example using the Android Terminal Emulator as a starting point.

Sounds perfect! I was following the basic directions there, however, I can't hardly get started because I can't seem to find the path to the "Downloads" directory?! In doing my research, I found this interesting and thoughtful writeup, but didn't get to a successful answer. The location does not have to be "Download", but that directory was easily enough mapped by my desktop computer's file system browser upon plugging in the USB connector In fact, that's how I installed the Terminal Emulator - by putting the apk file and for several other "side load" apps into Download and then telling Android to install them.

So the real trouble is, I can't seem to find that location from within the Terminal Emulator! For me on Pixel 3 XL using Termux , the absolute filepath was. Sign up to join this community.

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Even after all these years of being the most widely used mobile platform in the world, Android still remains a bit patchy when it comes to customizing download locations. For smaller apps this should do the trick, but remember that larger apps like games or apps that store additional files like podcasts or recordings will automatically store those files in your internal storage. So even if your podcast app is on your SD card, saving you 50MB or whatever, all those hundreds of MB of podcasts are still clogging up your device.

Once your device is rooted, check out apps like FolderMount and Link2SD to easily move entire installed apps onto external storage. Thankfully, apps often contain their own download options internally, letting you save tons of space by moving big audio, video and picture files over to your SD card. But if you want to dig deeper than that, then it makes a strong case for rooting your device taking into consideration all the risks that entails, of course.

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