When you run a standard curl command, the most common surprise for users is that it doesn't "download" a file to a folder at all—by default, it simply prints the data directly to your terminal screen.
curl -o ~/Downloads/file.zip https://example.com/file.zip B. Use the --output-dir Flag How to capture cURL output to a file? - Stack Overflow curl where does it download
To actually save a file to your computer, you must explicitly tell curl where to put it. 1. The Default: Your Current Working Directory When you run a standard curl command, the
Type pwd (on Linux/macOS) or cd (on Windows) to see your active folder path before running curl . 2. Using Flags to Save Files - Stack Overflow To actually save a file
You can include the destination folder directly in the filename argument for the lowercase -o flag.
Because curl defaults to "Standard Output" (stdout), you must use one of these flags to trigger a physical download:
Example: curl -O https://example.com saves as image.png in your current folder.