What is a good file compress app for Mac OS X?

Go for the Terminal!

Compress Files in Mac OS X Terminal, UNIX

Wikipedia agrees, gzip is better than zip: “gzip is not to be confused with the ZIP archive format, which also uses DEFLATE. The ZIP format can hold collections of files without an external archiver, but is less compact than compressed tarballs holding the same data, because it compresses files individually and cannot take advantage of redundancy between files (solid compression).”

Thanks :) I’ll give it a shot!

Um… what does it mean by “cd” the directory?

‘cd’ is a commend to change the current directory you’re working in. If your files are stored in ~/Documents/Compress then enter ‘cd Documents/Compress’.

Oh ok! I am new to this command line thing :)

In fact, this is my first Mac… Only had it six months!

Welcome to Mac land then! Terminal is a fantastic place to be if you feel comfortable there. There is probably an application somewhere that would gzip files for you with a nice GUI but that would take more effort and not teach you some useful stuff.

Ooh, quick tip: you can press Tab to complete directory or file names, i.e. ‘Doc’ > Press Tab > Completes it to ‘Documents’. Works for files in current directory but also nests: ‘Doc’ > Tab > ‘Documents’ > Add ’/Com’ > Press Tab > ‘Documents/Compress’

I just looked up Gzip… Is it a separate application I have to download before I can compress the file this way? Or is it already in the OS?

It’s already included with the OS. It’s a command line application so it wont be in your Applications folder.

If u don’t want to go through the hassle of downloading another software to compress just right click on the file or folder and click on compress file and the OS will do it for u

@dexinsf Thanks, but I tried that, and it didn’t compress the file at all; it just put it in a zip. I need to make the file size actually smaller, to actually compress the file size.

@johanspun I’m a visual learner, so could you show me what I need to type if my file was in the Movies folder in my Home? I was thinking ‘cd Movies/Goldeneye’ but when I put the file name in, it says there was a syntax error.

@nashish You’ll need to include the file type extension. Say it’s a .avi for now, you would enter:

cd Movies
gzip Goldeneye.avi

If you don’t know the filetype, just start typing Goldeneye and press Tab.

I’m making the assumption here that Goldeneye is the file you want to compress.

@nashish Think of the current directory as a Finder window you have open. If you want to do something to a file, you have to navigate to the folder it’s in first (‘cd Movies’) then perform the action on the file (‘gzip Goldeneye.avi’).

@johanspun And if the file was nested in another folder, my first command would be ‘cd Movies/Goldeneye’ then I would type ‘gzip Goldeneye.avi’. Correct?

If Ur trying to compress a movie try downloading handbrake and it will compress the file size to something other than what u have currently

@dexinsf Hm, I do have HandBrake; I could try that. Thanks.

@dexinsf Good idea that man!

@nashish Yeah, if the file was in a folder called Goldeneye… you got it.

@johanspun Ok, if all that is correct, why does it still say I have ”—bash syntax error near unexpected token”? :/

Hmm, it looks like it was the file name that was tricking it… It appears you can’t have spaces in the file names either.

Oh wait… I see what I did incorrectly now! Thanks for all your help.

No problem at all! Have fun with Terminal!

I have the command running… How do I know when it’s done?

When you get a prompt back. So far, any time you’ve typed something there should be a line of the left, something along the lines of ‘username$ ’ possibly with some stuff in front of it. When that appears, the command is complete.

Ah ha! It’s still running then. Thanks again… Let’s hope the file size is smaller than the original. I’d hate to get the same result as the normal Mac OS X “Compress” command.

Heh. The compress command makes a zip. This will make a gzip. How much of a difference it will make I’m not entirely sure.

Lol apparently it didn’t make a difference at all! The file size is still 4.37 GBs, but at least I learned a bit about the Terminal.

Heh. Sorry for wasting your time then.

Here is a hint.. You can just drag folders and files into the Terminal and it will magically fill in the path.

Go to finder, right-click on file (or CTRL-click), select “Compress <filename>”, done.