Advertisement

How to Move the Downloads Folder in Windows 10

Windows 10 stores your Downloads folder in your user profile. In most cases, its path is something like C:\Users\SomeUser\Downloads. You can open it quickly by typing %userprofile%\Downloads in File Explorer's address bar. Let's see how to move this folder to another location.

Advertisеment


There are several ways to access your Downloads folder. For example, you can enter "%userprofile%\Downloads" in File Explorer's address bar as mentioned above. Or you can open This PC and find the Downloads folder there. In this article, I will use the path with the %userprofile% environment variable as a reference.

You might want to change the default location of the Downloads folder in order to save space on the partition where your operating system is installed (your C: drive). Here is how it can be done.

To move the Downloads folder in Windows 10, do the following.

  1. Open File Explorer. Tip: you can set File Explorer open to the Downloads folder directly!
  2. Type or copy-paste the following in the address bar: %userprofile%Enter Userprofile In The Address Bar
  3. Press the enter key. Your user profile folder will be opened.User Profile Folder Opened See the Downloads folder.
  4. Right click the Downloads folder and select Properties.Downloads Folder Properties Context Menu
  5. In Properties, go to the Location tab, and click on the Move button.Downloads Folder Properties Location
  6. In the folder browse dialog, select the new folder you want to store your Downloads.Select New Destination For The User Folder
  7. Click on the OK button to make the change.Downloads Folder Change Location
  8. When prompted, click on Yes to move all your files from the old location to the new folder.Windows 10 Move Downloads

This way, you can change the location of your Downloads folder to another folder, or to a folder on a different disk drive, or even to a mapped network drive. This will allow you to save space on the system drive, which can be particularly useful for users who keep large files in Downloads.

If you reinstall Windows 10, your custom Downloads folder stored on a different drive won't disappear with all your data if you accidentally format your system partition. The next time you save a file to the Downloads folder, Windows will use the new location that you set.

Here is the full set of articles on how to move your user folders:

Support us

Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:

If you like this article, please share it using the buttons below. It won't take a lot from you, but it will help us grow. Thanks for your support!

Advertisеment

Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

One thought on “How to Move the Downloads Folder in Windows 10”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

css.php
Using Telegram? Subscribe to the blog channel!
Hello. Add your message here.