Best Zip File Opening For Mac - generationchicago’s blog

Files you download from the Internet are often compressed or zipped so that they take up less space and arrive much faster than files that haven’t been compressed. You can easily identify compressed files by their extensions, such as .zip (a common standard used in OS X and Windows) and .sit. Before you can use these files, you must learn how to unzip files on mac computers for proper access – luckily the process isn’t that complicated!

Zip File Opener Free Online
Free Zip File Opener Mac
Rar And Zip File Opening

How to unzip files on mac computers

Unzipping a file on a mac computer is user-friendly and intuitive. To unzip files on a mac, simply follow the steps below:

After a while I found that you can drag and drop a file from exploer onto 7-Zip with exisitng archive opened and then it will ask if you want to add a new file to exisitng archive. But even using it that way, 7-Zip crashed on me sometimes. Zipeg is free application for opening ZIP and RAR files on Mac and Windows. Zipeg helps to open RAR or ZIP archive, to find the right files inside the archive and to unpack them. Zipeg is world's simplest unzip utility that supports password protected and multipart zip and rar files. Zipeg makes it easy to open and zip and rar files for quick, efficient, and secure unpacking and exploring. RAR files, or Roshal Archive files, are an archival file format containing data compressed for faster file transfer speeds. Macs do not come with a default, pre-installed program on Mac OS Yosemite to open RAR files; however, free programs are available for download to open RAR files on a Mac, including Stuffit Expander, RAR Expander and UnRarX. UniExtractor lives in your Windows right-click menu, waiting for compressed files that need opening. The user-interface (such as it is) is spartan, with a tiny box and few preferences to select.

Double click the zipped file.
The file will automatically be decompressed by Archive Utility into the same folder the compressed file is in.
Access the extracted files by clicking the appropriate icons.

Zip File Opener Free Online

Alternatively, if the method above does not work, you can right-click on the .zip package, and select Open With > Archive Utility (default).

Apple and third party software

Apple used to include a program called StuffIt Expander to decompress zipped files, but doesn’t now that OS X lets you unzip files (but not .sit files). However, StuffIt from SmithMicro Software still comes in handy for opening other types of compressed files, notably the .sit or .sitx compressed types. Go to www.stuffit-expander.com or www.stuffit.com/mac/index.html to download a free version of the software or to splurge for the Deluxe version. In addition to compressing files, StuffIt Deluxe lets you encrypt and back up files.

Meanwhile, you can archive or create your own .zip files through OS X, which is useful if you’re e-mailing a number of meaty files to a friend. Right-click (or Ctrl-click) files you want to compress inside Finder and choose Compress Filename. The newly compressed files carry the .zip extension. The archive is created in the same location as the original file and is named originalfilename.zip. You can also choose File→Compress. If you compress a lot of files at once, the archive takes the name Archive.zip.

By default, compressed files are opened with the Archive Utility. It appears in the Dock (in Leopard) while the files are being unsqueezed, unless you choose to open them with Stuffit Expander or some other program.

How to zip files on a mac

On the flip side, you can also archive or create your own .zip files through OS X, which is useful if you’re e-mailing a number of meaty files to a client or friend. Follow the step-by-step instructions below to easily zip files on a mac:

Right-click or Ctrl-click the multiple files you want to compress (whether on the desktop or inside the Finder).
Select Compress Filename from the pop-up menu.
The files are now compressed in a .zip extension and the archive is created in the same location as the original file name, except with the .zip appended to its name.

On some Apple computers, you can also compress a file by simply choosing File→Compress. If you compress a lot of files at once, the archive takes the name Archive.zip.

The Mac really doesn't have a lot of great utilities for creating file archives, but it does have one excellent option for unarchiving: the aptly named The Unarchiver. It integrates directly with the OS X Finder and supports practically any format you can imagine.

Note: The Unarchiver isn't actually capable of creating archives, but there's really no app on the Mac that does a great job of archiving and unarchiving. You really need two separate apps for the best experience. The Unarchiver provides that experience for unarchiving, but for creating compressed files you'll need something else. We'll discuss your options first thing in the Competition section of this post.

The Unarchiver

Platform: Mac OS X
Price: Free
Download Page

Features

Supports practically every compressed file format you can think of. See the full list here
You can toggle which compressed file formats The Unarchiver will decompress and which ones it will ignore.
Integrates with the Mac OS X Finder like it was a built-in feature.
You can choose where it extracts files, or you can have it ask you every time.
You can choose to keep or discard the archive once it has been decompressed.

Where It Excels

The Unarchiver doesn't do much, but that's kind of where it excels. It just unarchives practically any file you can throw at it. It's about as speedy as you can expect, and you can customize which file types it handles and which ones it doesn't. Using it feels like part of the OS X Finder, which is the other thing that makes it so great. Basically, using The Unarchiver is like adding a much broader range of supported compressed file formats to your Mac.

Where It Falls Short

The Unarchiver doesn't do much, so it's lacking in that regard. Not only would the ability to actually compress files be very welcome—especially if it was through a contextual menu item—but the lack of features and control make it difficult to deal with an imperfect (and the occasional multi-part) archive. Aside from that, there's not much to complain about. It does what it says it's going to do, and it does it well the majority of the time.

The Competition

Before we get into the competition (of which there is very little), let's talk about apps that can compress your files. The best ones are kind of pricey. Archiver is very pretty and will cost you $19. Behind it's good looks is a pretty good feature set, offering plenty of supported formats and even the ability to password-protect an archive. Alternatively you have an app called Compress Files. It weighs in at $15, so you'll save a little money. In exchange for those savings you lose a few supported file formats. For a little more than both apps ($20), you can get BetterZIP, which offers tons of features and supported formats. If you want a free utility that only supports ZIP files, use the one built-in to the Finder already. If you want a free app that can create zip files without including the annoying .DS_STORE files that OS X loves to include in its archives, try YemuZip.

Free Zip File Opener Mac

As for the competition for The Unarchiver, there are a few apps worth noting. UnRarX is probably the best RAR decompressor on the Mac, but it suffers from a really unfriendly user interface. It's free, though, and is indispensable when dealing with RAR archives—specifically the problematic ones. For ZIP files, you can count on the Mac OS X Finder to handle those for you no problem. Most of the previously-mentioned archive creation apps can handle unarchiving files, too, but nothing is quite as good as The Unarchive so chances are you'll prefer to use two apps—one for archiving and one for unarchiving—to get the job done.

UPDATE: @dumbinacan sent me a link to Keka, which I was not aware of, and it's pretty great. It archives and unarchives, costs nothing, and has a contextual menu add-on so you can use it directly in the Finder.

Rar And Zip File Opening

ANOTHER UPDATE: A lot of user suggestions have been coming in so I thought I'd start a list of some popular user alternatives.

Entropy, $19, via @rainierrr
iPack, $2, via @artiste212

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