Creating a ZIP file on your Mac is really easy: select a few files in Finder, right-click on those and select “Compress…”. It’s the equivalent of selecting “Send to ZIP Folder” under Windows.
But Mac OSX does something rather bizarre when creating ZIP files: it adds several unnecessary, unwanted and un-called-for files starting with __MACOSX. This drives PC users nuts – and believe me, it drives Mac users nuts too.
Thankfully there is a relatively easy way to remove those files. This may not always be necessary, but if you require a “clean” ZIP file, here’s what you can do.
First, create your ZIP via the finder – like you always do. Next, open Terminal and cd into the directory where your ZIP file is located. If it’s a long path, just type “cd “, then drag the folder into Terminal (less typing is always good).
Now type the following:
zip -d your-archive.zip "__MACOSX*"
And that should do it. This command (zip) will remove everything (-d) starting with __MACOSX from your ZIP file (your-archive.zip).
To verify, type the following:
unzip -l your-archive.zip
This will simply list the contents of your-archive.zip.
Alternatively there is a utility called YemuZip: http://www.yellowmug.com/yemuzip/
Or just use a PC 😉
you’re an idiot
it doesn’t drive anybody nuts… simply put, you and my professor a people with nothing better to do
? There is that for sure… There’s also technical requirements for vendors you might work with, which is what inspired this post: I was delivering 3D files as a ZIP package to a vendor (Renderosity) and they reject files that contain those additional Mac files. Hence, I had to remove them. They still drive me nuts though when I’m fiddling on the command line though. Tell your professor I understand him ?