Unzipping from the command line is also very simple, with the easy ‘unzip’ command: Not interested in using the standard Finder and file system approach? Zip archives can also be created from the command line by using the terminal command ‘zip’ with the following syntax:Īnother simple way to create an archive from the command line is to use the Terminal’s drag & drop support, type out ‘zip’ as usual but then drop in the file(s) to compress into the Terminal window. How to Create a Zip from the Command Line on Mac Opening zip files is even easier, all you need to do is just double-click on the archive and it will expand automatically with Archive Utility in the same folder the archive is stored in.įor example, if you’re extracting an archive named “ZippedSample.zip” in the ~/Downloads/ directory, the resulting extracted folder would be named “ZippedSample” within that same ~/Downloads/ directory. This works in all versions of Mac OS X, and you can access the compress item option from a right-click with a mouse, control-click with keyboard, or two-finger click on a trackpad from the Mac. If more than one file is being zipped, the archive will be named “Archive.zip”, and if multiple archives are created, they will be named successively “Archive 2.zip” and so on.

If a single file is being zipped, the zip archive will maintain the standard file name but append the.

Right-click on a file, folder, or files you want to zip.

Locate the items to zip in the Mac Finder (file system).

You can use this to create zip files of files, folders, or both:

Mac password protect zip