How to Zip Files on Mac – Ever wondered how Mac OS X would render a zip file? We have recently shown how to encrypt zip archives by password, yet a reader posed a simplified but entirely legitimate query in the comments: “How about having a regular zip file just?”
Well, it’s simple to build a zip archive on a Mac and with the compression tools built directly into Mac OS X, you don’t need to purchase extra applications or add-ons to easily construct zips and compress a single file, a group of files, or a whole folder.
How to Zip Files on Mac – Compress or Uncompress Files on Mac
Contents
If you don’t know how to build zips on the Mac, here’s exactly how to do it, and quick.
How to Make a Zip Archive in Mac OS X
You may use this to build zip collections with data, directories, or both: in the Mac Finder (file system) identify the objects to zip.
Right-click a tab, folder, or folder you would like to zip.
Select “Comprising Objects.”
In the same tab, consider the newly created archive of.zip.
How to zip data on Mac OS X via the compressed directory.
When a single file is zipped, the zip folder can retain the default file name but add the.zip suffix.
The archive would be labeled “Archive.zip” if more than one file is zipped, and if several files are made, they will be designated “Archive 2.zip” and so on.
Make a Zip File in Mac OS X
It functions in both versions of Mac OS X, and you can reach the compress object option by right-clicking with a mouse, keyboard-clicking, or two-finger clicking on a Mac trackpad.
Extracting Zip Archives
Opening zip files is much better, only double-click the archive and it will instantly open with the Archive Tool in the same folder the archive is located in.
A zip archive in Mac OS X
For eg, if you extract an archive called “ZippedSample.zip” in the directory/Downloads/, the resulting extracted folder will be labeled “ZippedSample” inside the same directory/Downloads/.
How to Create a Zip from the Command Line on Mac
Not involved in utilizing the Finder and File System solution as standard? You may also build file archives from the command line by using the terminal command ‘file’ with the syntax below:
zip archive.zip file.txt
Another easy way to build an archive from the command line is to use the drag & drop feature of the terminal, type ‘zip’ as normal, then drop the file (s) into the terminal window to compress it.
Unzipping from the command line is also very simple, with the easy ‘unzip’ command:
unzip archive.zip
If you are interested, you may assign paths and other information, but if all you want to do is to remove a file, there’s not much else to do than just unzip.
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Conclusion
While learning the command line alternatives is fine, most users are better supported with friendlier Mac Finder-based methods, either by zipping from the right-click method mentioned above or by actually opening the file directly.