Seeing What Files Are Getting Downloaded from Your GitHub Releases
Ever wondered which of your binaries, installers or assets on your GitHub releases are actually being downloaded? That neat total-downloads badge does its job, but it hides the part many of us really care about: which file , how many times , on each release . Good news: you can pull that info using the GitHub API. Let’s dive in. The Problem When you use the standard UI of a GitHub repo, you can see the Releases tab, browse tags, assets, etc. But you won’t reliably see download counts for each attached asset. That means less insight into which asset people pick, and less feedback on what builds or platforms are most used. The Solution: Using the GitHub CLI + API Here’s how you can pull download-counts for release assets: gh api repos/:owner/:repo/releases \ --jq '.[] | {tag_name, assets: [.assets[] | {name, download_count}]}' Or just for the latest release: gh api repos/:owner/:repo/releases/latest \ --jq '.assets[] | {name, download_count}' You’ll ...