'Where do downloads go on Android?': How to find your downloads on an Android device

google android messages app
google android messages app

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

  • You can find your downloads on your Android device in your My Files app (called File Manager on some phones), which you can find in the device's App Drawer.

  • Unlike iPhone, app downloads are not stored on the home screen of your Android device, and can be found with an upward swipe on the home screen.

  • Within My Files or File Manager, you can access your downloads, images, videos, audio files, and various cloud services, such as Google Drive or OneDrive.

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With all of the amazing features available on Android, like a high definition camera, apps for everything, lighting fast processing power, and so on, there is one thing that can be less than convenient: the difficulty of finding downloaded files.

It's almost as if your smartphone's downloads disappear just as soon as the transfer of data has been completed.

In fact, unless you know where to look, on some phones that's effectively what happens. So let's tell you where to look for downloads on your Android phone. It's a little place called the app drawer.

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How to find downloads on your Android device 

1. Open the Android app drawer by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.

2. Look for the My Files (or File Manager) icon and tap it. If you don't see it, instead tap the Samsung icon with many smaller icons inside it — My Files will be among them.

Where do downloads go on Android
Where do downloads go on Android

Steven John/Business Insider

3. Inside the My Files app, tap "Downloads."

Where do downloads go on Android
Where do downloads go on Android

Steven John/Business Insider

You should now be able to see all of your downloads.

 

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