There is no "zip download" button to download source in .zip on github

Use DownGit; you can download individual files or directories, and even create download-link for them-

You can also configure properties of the download-file. See here for detailed usage.

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_{Disclaimer: I fell into the same problem as the question-asker, could not find any proper solution, so I created this tool for my own use, and later made it available for everyone.}

You can't download a subdirectory from GitHub as a zip file.

Some options are to

• download the full zip and manually extract the subdirectory that you want, or
• use git with sparse checkouts instead of downloading as a zip file.
  • This approach does download the entire repository into the .git directory, but your working copy will only contain the files and directories that you want.

For more information on sparse checkouts have a look at this answer.