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How to download a file from a server using the terminal

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I’ve had the need to transfer a file I had on a server.

I was connected through SSH and I didn’t want to setup the SFTP connection (and I didn’t know if the SFTP connection was allowed), so I opened another terminal window and used the command scp.

Here’s the syntax:

scp -i /.ssh/yourkey USER@SERVER:/path-to-file/on/server.txt ./

Swap USER and SERVER with your server details, and also /path-to-file/on/server.txt with the path of the file. And use your SSH key path.

This will download the file in the same folder you are in, because I specified ./. You can change it to any folder on your computer.

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