actions/download-artifact

If name is not provided, all artifacts for the run are downloaded. By default, each artifact is extracted into its own subdirectory named after the artifact. Use merge-multiple: true to extract all artifacts into the same directory specified by path.

# Download all to current working directory (creates subdirectories per artifact)
- uses: actions/download-artifact@v8

# Download all to a specific directory (creates subdirectories per artifact)
- uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    path: path/to/artifacts

# Download all to the SAME directory (no subdirectories)
- uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    path: path/to/artifacts
    merge-multiple: true

The actions/download-artifact action allows you to download Actions Artifacts from your workflow runs. It is internally powered by the @actions/artifact package. You can download specific artifacts by name or ID, or download all artifacts from the current run.

- uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    name: my-artifact

Standard artifact uploading (zipping) removes file permissions, resetting directories to 755 and files to 644. To preserve exact permissions (like executable bits), you should tar your files before uploading and use archive: false in actions/upload-artifact@v7. Then, download the .tar file and unpack it manually.

# 1. Tar and upload without archiving
- name: 'Tar files'
  run: tar -cvf my_files.tar /path/to/my/directory

- name: 'Upload Artifact'
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v7
  with:
    path: my_files.tar
    archive: false

# 2. Later, download the file
- name: 'Download Artifact'
  uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    name: my_files.tar

In v4, every upload generates a unique artifact ID. To prevent TOCTOU (Time-of-check to time-of-use) issues where an artifact might be replaced by a different one with the same name, you can download specifically by ID using the artifact-ids input in actions/download-artifact@v4.

jobs:
  upload:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    outputs:
      artifact-id: ${{ steps.upload-step.outputs.artifact-id }}
    steps:
      - name: Create a file
        run: echo "hello world" > my-file.txt
      - name: Upload Artifact
        id: upload-step
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: my-artifact
          path: my-file.txt

  download:
    needs: upload
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Download Artifact by ID
        uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
        with:
          artifact-ids: ${{ needs.upload.outputs.artifact-id }}

In v3, uploading to an existing artifact name would overwrite the contents.

In v4, artifacts are immutable. To simulate overwriting, use the overwrite: true input in actions/upload-artifact@v4. This deletes the existing artifact before creating a new one. Note that this creates an entirely new artifact with a different ID.

jobs:
  upload-again:
    needs: upload
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Create a different file
        run: echo "goodbye world" > my-file.txt
      - name: Upload Artifact
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: my-artifact
          path: my-file.txt
          overwrite: true

You can use the pattern input with a glob pattern to match multiple artifacts. When combined with merge-multiple: true, all matching artifacts will be extracted into the same directory.

- name: Download All Artifacts
  uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    path: my-artifact
    pattern: my-artifact-*
    merge-multiple: true

To download a single artifact, provide either the name or the artifact-ids. When downloading a single artifact, the contents are extracted directly to the specified path without creating an additional subdirectory.

# By name
- uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    name: my-artifact

# By ID
- uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    artifact-ids: 12345

# By ID to a specific directory
- uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    artifact-ids: 12345
    path: your/destination/dir

To download artifacts from a different repository or a different workflow run, you must provide a github-token with appropriate permissions (e.g., actions:read), the target repository, and the target run-id.

- uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    name: my-other-artifact
    github-token: ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }}
    repository: actions/toolkit
    run-id: 1234