How To Download Jupyter Notebooks From Google Colab And Upload Them To

Leo Migdal

-Nov 17, 2025, 6:08 AM

how to download jupyter notebooks from google colab and upload them to

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I have to download code written in a Google Colab notebook, because I need to send it via email. How do I do this? Google Colab (short for Colaboratory) has revolutionized how data scientists, developers, and educators work with Python. As a free, cloud-based Jupyter notebook environment, it eliminates the need for local setup, offers free access to GPUs/TPUs, and seamlessly integrates with Google Drive and GitHub. However, one common challenge users face is importing custom .py files (Python modules) into Colab notebooks—especially when transitioning from local Jupyter workflows. Whether you’re reusing utility functions, organizing code into modular scripts, or collaborating on projects, importing .py files in Colab is essential for writing clean, maintainable code.

In this guide, we’ll walk through four step-by-step methods to import .py files into Colab, along with troubleshooting tips. We’ll also explore why Colab is a powerful alternative to local Jupyter notebooks. This method is ideal for small, one-off files you need to import temporarily. The file will only persist for the duration of your Colab session (it will be deleted if you restart the runtime or close the notebook). Limitations: The file is temporary—you’ll need to re-upload it if you restart the runtime. For frequently used files or projects stored in Google Drive, mounting your Drive to Colab ensures persistent access across sessions.

This is the most reliable method for long-term projects. If you haven’t heard about it, Google Colab is a platform that is widely used for testing out ML prototypes on its free K80 GPU. If you have heard about it, chances are that you gave it shot. But you might have become exasperated because of the complexity involved in transferring large datasets. This blog compiles some of the methods that I’ve found useful for uploading and downloading large files from your local system to Google Colab. I’ve also included additional methods that can useful for transferring smaller files with less effort.

Some of the methods can be extended to other remote Jupyter notebook services, like Paperspace Gradient. The most efficient method to transfer large files is to use a cloud storage system such as Dropbox or Google Drive. Dropbox offers upto 2GB free storage space per account. This sets an upper limit on the amount of data that you can transfer at any moment. Transferring via Dropbox is relatively easier. You can also follow the same steps for other notebook services, such as Paperspace Gradient.

Uploading a large number of images (or files) individually will take a very long time, since Dropbox (or Google Drive) has to individually assign IDs and attributes to every image. Therefore, I recommend that you archive your dataset first. Google Colab is a service provided by Google for a lot of researchers and developers around the globe. It is a Jupyter Notebook-like environment in one single place without any prerequisites. It is free to use with a limited number of computer resources and engines including free access to GPUs i.e. Graphics Processing Units for accelerated parallel processing of code.

It also comes with a premium version with more readily available resources computational resources. It is one of the best platforms for all students interested in the field of computer science especially machine learning, data science, artificial intelligence, etc. Colab provides a free workspace in the form of Python3 or R notebooks. These notebooks can be used to implement various compute-heavy tasks in a very easy manner. In this article, we will learn to upload folders in our Google Colab notebook. You can also refer to the video solution for this end which is attached at the end of this article.

Prerequisite for the task - A Google Account. Refer to this article which explains how to create a Gmail account, which is equivalent to creating a Google Account. Let's start with uploading folders in Google Colab. There are 3 ways in which this task can be achieved: The most simple way to upload a folder onto Google Colab is to create a .zip file of the folder on our local machines and then upload it as a file on Colab. We can create a zip file of the folder and upload it as a file onto Colab using UI.

Google Colaboratory is a free Jupyter notebook environment that runs on Google’s cloud servers, letting the user leverage backend hardware like GPUs and TPUs. This lets you do everything you can in a Jupyter notebook hosted in your local machine, without requiring the installations and setup for hosting a notebook in your local machine. Colab comes with (almost) all the setup you need to start coding, but what it doesn’t have out of the box is your datasets! How do you access your data from within Colab? Since Colab lets you do everything which you can in a locally hosted Jupyter notebook, you can also use shell commands like ls, dir, pwd, cd, cat, echo, et cetera using line-magic (%) or... To browse the directory structure, you can use the file-explorer pane on the left.

Since a Colab notebook is hosted on Google’s cloud servers, there’s no direct access to files on your local drive (unlike a notebook hosted on your machine) or any other environment by default.

How To Download Jupyter Notebooks From Google Colab And Upload Them To

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