A ZIP archive compresses one or more files into a single smaller one. It’s invaluable when you need to free up drive space or send multiple files via email or Messages.

The Finder in macOS has ZIP compression built in, and it couldn’t be easier to use. Here’s a quick guide to the basics—and a few advanced features.

To compress a single file or folder, Control-click it and choose the Compress option in the contextual menu. Your new archive file will have the same name as the original, but with a .zip extension.

Decompressing is even easier: just double-click the archive!

Behind the scenes, Archive Utility in macOS is handling all of the Finder’s compression work; you never need to open the app.

The app does offer some useful ways to customize archiving actions though.

Use Spotlight to find and open Archive Utility, then open the app’s Preferences window. Here you can change where new archives are saved (send them all to the Desktop, for instance); what to do with an archive after expanding it (delete it or keep it); and more.

These apps expand on the ZIP features in macOS.

Need to expand an archive other than a standard ZIP file? The Unarchiver decodes everything from the BinHex file type used decades ago for Macintosh software to the Bzip2 format, which is common in the Unix and Linux worlds.

Keka specializes in creating archives in a range of formats with drag-and-drop simplicity. It also lets you password protect archives, split a big archive into smaller ones, adjust the balance between archive size and compression time, and more.