Open a zip file like a drive attached to the Mac and access files in it without unzipping it
Zip Mounter Lite
Developer Coral Wu
Difficulty
Time needed
10
The way that macOS handles zip archives is very basic. Creating them is easy enough, but accessing the files within a zip could be a lot better. In fact, even Windows does it better. However, as Apple likes to say, there is an app for that, and ZipMounter adds the missing features we need to macOS so that you can open zip files like drives, browse them in Finder, and view and copy files without extracting the zip.
You can download the app from the Mac App Store. We used the free ‘Lite’ version here, but the full version (£1.79/$1.99) can mount multiple zips at once, whereas the free version limits you to just the one.
Explore zip files
Browse and view the contents of zips
Step-by-step How to mount zip files like disks
1 Configure the preferences
Run ZipMounter and an icon appears in the menu bar. Click it and select ‘Preferences’ from the menu. There are four options to enable, which are turned off by default.
2 Find a zip
Find a zip file on the Mac’s disk or make one from one or more files and folders on the disk. Ctrl+click a selection of files and click ‘Compress’. Here’s a typical zip.
3 Extract zip contents
Double-click a zip and macOS extracts the files and folders it contains and saves them in a new folder. That’s fine for small zips, but what if it is hundreds of MBs? v
