Video Conversion & Compression Guide for Mac OS X Users You may need to use a video conversion/compression tool to:. Reduce the size of your video file for uploading. The recommended file size is 200 MB to 300 MB. Note: Before reducing your video file size, you should first trim your video so it contains only the video segment that will be. The Best Free File Compression app downloads for Mac: WinZip Mac RAR Expander The Unarchiver StuffIt Expander RAR Extractor Free BetterZip RAR Extract.
Since macOS is based on Unix there are a number of ways to compress files and folders within the filing system using Unix based application code, below are a few options using the Terminal or command line interface (cli). The default command line application interface in macOS is the Terminal and is stored in /Applications/Utilities.
File and folder compression saves on file size and ensures the contents are captured and delivered or stored as one monolithic file. A compressed file which contains files and folders is generally referred to as an archive. Here are some built-in compression applications you can use including zip, tar, gz, bz2, gz and dmg.
First up is ZIP one of the most commonly used compression techniques used across all platforms
To compress
To extract
If you want to make a zip without those invisible Mac resource files such as “_MACOSX” or “._Filename” and .ds store files, use the “-X” option in the command so:
Second up is TAR, an old favorite on Unix/Linux – you add the GZ for the compression – compresses tighter than zip
To compress
To extract
A variation on TAR GZ but with better compression than both tar.gz and zip.
To compress
To extract
Without the tar
To extract
This one is macOSnative only – for a GUI interface use /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility – for command line use:
To create
To mount
To view
To Eject
You can also use a number of different formats for creating a .dmg
That’s the low down, the more common compression packages available will typically be covered in one of the above.