Follow these steps to open zip files on Mac: Click the Unzip button. From the drop down menu, choose to unzip your files to this Mac, iCloud Drive, Dropbox or Google Drive. A 'Finder style' window will open.

• Third-Party Apps for Zipping and Unzipping Mac Files. The built-in compression system that can zip and unzip files in macOS and OS X is relatively basic, which is why many third-party apps are also available. A quick look at the Mac App Store reveals more than 50 apps for zipping and unzipping files.
• Download WinZip for free – The world's #1 zip file utility to instantly zip or unzip files, share files quickly through email, and much more.
• Download WinZip for free – The world's #1 zip file utility to instantly zip or unzip files, share files quickly through email, and much more.

By creating a zip file on Mac, you can compress a single file, multiple files, or an entire folder into an archive .zip. Both Mac OS X and macOS operating systems have the built-in compression systems. Thus, you can zip and unzip files on Mac without installing extra software.

Zip files take less storage space on Mac. Moreover, you can share the same content with less time by compressing zip files. Many people prefer to zip files to reduce the email-transmission time. By the way, you can upload more files as email attachments without the space limit.

If you are not familiar with zipping and unzipping files on Mac, you can refer to the following paragraphs. This article introduces the detailed steps to create a zip archive in different cases. You can also unarchive zip files to extract whatever you need.

• Part 1: What Is a Zip File on Mac
• Part 2: How to Zip a File on Mac
• Part 3: How to Unzip a File on Mac
• Part 4: Store Too Many Files on Mac? Try This Powerful Mac Cleaner

Part 1: What Is a Zip File on Mac

Zip is an archive file format created by Phil Katz and PKWARE in 1989. It is a standard format designed for lossless data compression. When you create a zip file, the filename extension is .zip or .zip (newer compression algorithms). A zip file contains one or more files under the zip compression. You can set password protection when you zip a file on Mac.

You may also see rar files in many situations. What’s the difference between zip and rar? Well, the rar format was released in 1993 as a proprietary archive file format. In the zip VS rar round, zip has the better popularity than rar format. You need to install WinRAR to open rar files. But if you want to open zip files on Mac, you can solve the problem with simple clicks easily.

Part 2: How to Zip a File on Mac

There is a pre-installed tool named “Archive Utility”. You can make zip files on Mac directly with the help of Archive Utility. Of course, you can also type command lines to compress a zip file on Mac.

Way 1: How to Create a Zip File on Mac

Way 2: How to Compress a Folder as ZIP on Mac

Way 3: How to Zip Files on Mac with Terminal

How To Download And Open Zip Files On Mac

Way 4: How to Password Protect a Zip File on Mac

Download Open Zip Files Mac Os

Part 3: How to Unzip a File on Mac

If you download files from some online sites, you can find that the downloaded files are archived as zip files too. How to unzip files on Mac to decompress them? You can get the answer here.

Way 1: How to Open Zip Files on Mac

Way 2: How to Unzip Files to the Same Directory on Mac

Way 3: How to Unzip a Zip File with Terminal on Mac

Part 4: Store Too Many Files on Mac? Try This Powerful Mac Cleaner

Though you can compress large files by zipping, those files still exist in your storage space. As time goes by, more and more zipped files will take place your limited storage space. You may forget those zipped files without opening for months. Well, why not clean up your Mac with Aiseesoft Mac Cleaner to get more free space? You can delete unneeded, large and old files selectively. The smart preview window can help you figure out whether you want to delete the junk file or not.

By the way, there is a built-in archiver. You can decompress 7Z and RAR files in one click. It is also supported to unzip GZ files on Mac here. You can uninstall apps, clean up cookies, encrypt files, manage Microsoft documents and do more changes within Mac Cleaner. It is more than a simple Mac cleaning software.

• Scan large & old files, worthless files/cache/logs and other unneeded files.
• Get smart filters for quick preview.
• Quickly remove large & old files by months you did not open or the file size.
• Compress files or extract files from 7z and RAR.
• Safely delete large zipped files and other worthless files in one click.

Note: You can compress any file or folder as a RAR file by using its “Unarchiver”. After adding your files, you can click the “Compress” or “Decompress” icon to extract and compress files on Mac. Thus, you can open any RAR file directly.

That’s all about how to Zip and Unzip a file on Mac. You can compress any photo, video, image, audio and more into a Zip file. Of course, you can open a zip file with the above steps easily. If your computer is still short of space after zipping files and folders, you can use Mac Cleaner to quickly delete downloads on Mac and compress/extract RAR files. The built-in duplicate finder, unarchiver and many other functions are also worth to try.

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When you first purchased your Mac, one of the biggest deciding factors you considered is most probably disk space. But as years go by using your computer, its disk space seems to become smaller and smaller by the day, no matter how diligently you delete unneeded files and unused programs. In the computing world, one could never have too much storage space. There are some ways you could save space on your Mac, including manually deleting files and programs or automatically doing so with the help of apps designed to clean out junk such as Outbyte MacRepair. Another way — albeit less popular — to free up Mac space is to compress and zip files. In this article, we’ll show you how to zip a file on Mac, unzip it, and protect it with a password.

How to Zip a File on Mac

Converting any standard file to a compressed zip file the traditional way is effortless. You can do this to photos, videos, audio files, and documents, among others. Here are the steps:

• In Finder, look for the file or folder you want to compress and zip. Right-click or Ctrl-click on it.
• Select “Compress [name of file or folder].”
• Wait for the compression process to finish. Larger files may take time to end compressing.
• Once done, a new .zip file will appear in the same location as the original file or folder. You will also hear a system alert tone to notify you of the recently completed compression.

You can now send these compressed files or folders via email. You may also choose to delete the original files and folders if you want to save on disk space, but note that you can’t readily open or view the zipped versions. You’ll need to unzip them first (more on that later).

Pro Tip: Scan your Mac for performance issues, junk files, harmful apps, and security threats
that can cause system issues or slow performance.

Special offer. About Outbyte, uninstall instructions, EULA, Privacy Policy.

How to Zip Multiple Files on Mac

You can also compress multiple files and/or folders. Here’s how:

• First, you have to create a new folder in Finder or Desktop. Press Shift + Command (CMD) + N).
• Name the new folder.
• Drag the files you want to zip together to the folder you just created. IMPORTANT: Before dropping the files, hold down Alt to make sure that the files are copied to the new folder.
• Once all the files you want to zip together are in the folder, Ctrl+Click on the folder, then choose Compress.
• A new zip file should now be created.
• Drag the folder (not the zip file) you created earlier to the Trash.

How to Change the Save Location of Your Zip Files

By default, a zipped file or folder will be saved in the same place where the original is saved. But, you may also choose a dedicated destination for all of your compressed files. It is done by opening the compression app. In Mac, it’s called the Archive Utility. A simple Spotlight search can easily find it. After searching for the app on Spotlight, open it. Click the Archive Utility drop-down menu at the top of the screen, then click Preferences. Select the menu named Save archive, then select into. Next, choose your desired destination.

How to Open and Unzip a Zip File on Mac

Opening a zip file to view its contents is pretty straightforward. Just double-click on the file, and it will open. The zip file can still be seen in the location folder, but an unzipped copy will also be created in the same location. Meanwhile, if were sent a compressed file in a format other than zipping, such as .rar, you’ll need to use an app to decompress it, such as The Unarchiver. You can get this app for free from the App Store. Once installed, the app automatically works pretty much exactly like your Mac’s built-in zip tool. Just double-click the archive file, then the files and folders will be extracted and saved in the same location as the archive file.

How to Enable or Disable a Browser From Extracting Zipped ‘Safe’ Files Automatically

Some web browsers, such as Safari, automatically unzip downloaded compressed files that they consider to be safe by default. In Safari, these safe files include movies, pictures, sounds, PDFs, text documents, and archives. However, if you prefer to decompress downloaded zip files yourself, you can opt out of this feature.

In Safari, go to the drop-down menu. Locate and select Preferences, then click the General tab. Down below the window, you will see “Open “safe” files after downloading.” Leave the box checked if you want Safari to decompress these safe files automatically. Otherwise, untick the box.

How to Protect Your Zip Files With a Password

Now, here’s the more challenging bit. If you want to conceal some of your files, you can do so protecting it with a password. It is an excellent solution for highly confidential files since you probably won’t bother going through the quite complicated process to protect regular files. You may also do this for files that you are about to send through an unsecured messaging or mailing system. When you encrypt a zip file or folder, anyone who is trying to access the file using whether a Mac or PC will have to enter the password you create. To protect your zip file with a password, you’ll have to do it in the Terminal. As an example, let’s assume that the file is named softwaretested.jpg. Now, follow these steps:

• Open Terminal by going to Applications > Utilities > Terminal. You may also search for it on Spotlight.
• Type in cd Desktop then hit Enter/Return.
• Type in zip -e softwaretested.zip softwaretested.jpg, then hit Enter/Return.
• At this point, Terminal will ask you for the password. Type in the password you have in mind. Note that it will appear as if nothing is happening, but it’s designed this way so that the password will be concealed.
• When done typing the password, hit Enter/Return.
• The Terminal will ask you to verify the password. Type it again, then hit Enter/Return.
• Let Terminal finish the job. Status progress will be shown in the form of a percentage. When done, close the Terminal window.

A Note on Naming Your Zip Files

If you plan to protect a zip file or folder with a password, it is recommended that you don’t put spaces on the file name as much as possible. Telling the Terminal to password-protect a file with a name that has spaces will require you to do extra work. For instance, if your filename is software tested.jpg, you’ll have to type the code so as:

zip -e software tested.zip software tested.jpg

Download Open Zip Files Mac Computer

It’s not that difficult, but you should take extra caution whenever dealing with a file with spaces on its filename.

How to Password-Protect a Zip Folder

If it’s a zip folder you want to put a password on, change the -e extension to -er. For instance, zip -er softwaretested.zip softwaretested.

How to Open a Password-Protected Zip File or Folder

If you were sent a password-protected zip file or want to open your encrypted files, just double-click on them as usual, then enter the password when asked.

Zipping files on Mac is just one of the ways you can save space on your computer and compress big files and folders before sending them to someone else. Know of other file compression tips and methods? Share them with us in the comments below!