ZIP files are very important, they work in a similar way to WinRAR and are used to compress a folder or several files on Mac and Windows. It is an extremely useful program that will help us compress hundreds of files into one, something very interesting, especially when we have to send several documents by mail or some other application..
What is a ZIP file?
Basically, we can put all the content of a folder in a single file. ZIPs work in the same way as a standard folder, the only difference is that we can just convert 200 files into a single compressed file.
In this way, it becomes much easier to send and receive files. Best of all, in many cases, you can also reduce the size of compressed files, without losing quality..
Are ZIP files dangerous?
In part they can be, this will depend on the files that the container contains. ZIPs are not dangerous, but if a person decides to compress malware and we unzip it without analyzing it with one of the best antiviruses, then it can become dangerous.
Just to clarify, ZIP files themselves are not dangerous. But if a malicious act compresses a file with other malicious files, then it can be a danger to our computer. That is why we must be very careful with what we download from certain websites..
Compress a folder on Mac
If we want to save a lot of time and we have to send several files via email, for example, we can compress all of them and send a single file. Luckily, zipping a folder is just too easy.
- We must have all the files in a single folder.
- Then we are going to right click on this folder to open the context menu.
- Next, we are going to click on “ Compress the folder ”. The option automatically activates the built-in compression function of Mac. It will compress your files and folders in a matter of seconds.
As a result, we are going to get a compressed file that will have the same name as the original folder. The only difference will be that the compressed file will have a .zip extension. Although we can double click it and see the contents of the package before decompressing it if we wish.
Open a ZIP file or folder on Mac
If we double click on the compressed file, we will be able to view all the files that are inside it.
Another option is to use Unarchiver , the first thing to do is to download the app and install it from the Mac app store. Let's launch Unarchiver and associate it with the archive files. Then we will simply double click on the ZIP to unzip it.