Opening .zip files on a Mac couldn’t be easier: just double-click the .zip file and the uncompressed contents will appear next to it. If you do this in a Finder window and don’t immediately see the contents, try organizing by Name or Date Modified. The .zip versions are no longer needed once uncompressed and can be deleted to recover storage space.

Archive Utility preferences

The default built-in app for .zip files on macOS is the Archive Utility (Internal Hard Drive > System > Library > CoreServices). Open the utility to change the preferences for .zip files.

1. Double click the .zip folder.

2. Locate the new contents in the same location as the .zip folder.

Opening a .zip file on Windows is simple with the Extract All feature. When this happens the .zip file remains, and the contents are extracted in the same directory, or wherever you choose. You typically don’t need to keep .zip files once they’ve been extracted, so delete them to recover the storage space.

Always extract before running Windows installers

Some installers are delivered as .zip files and must be uncompressed first. On Windows, you can access the files inside while they’re still compressed. That might be alright for some purposes, but you should not run installer .exe files until they’ve first been extracted. Another good practice is to delete the .zip file after you’ve extracted the contents, as keeping both with just occupy storage space.

1. Right-click the .zip folder and choose Extract All.

2. Select the location where you want your extracted files to appear and click Extract. Extracting to the desktop make files easier to find but don’t store them here permanently.

3. Your extracted files will now appear on your desktop or in whatever location you chose in step two.