Zip and Unzip Files

1. To make a zip, stay on Create zip and drop your files in the box (or click to choose). Remove any you don't want with the ✕ button.
2. Optionally type a folder name and pick a compression level, then press Create zip. The download starts on its own, and you'll see the total size before and after.
3. To open a zip, switch to Unzip and drop a .zip file. You'll see every file inside with its size and date.
4. Tap the download button next to a file to save just that one, or the eye button to preview a small text file.
5. Tick the files you want and press Download selected as one zip or Download selected one by one. Entries with unsafe names are marked and skipped.

Zip and unzip files in your browser

This tool lets you zip files into one .zip, or unzip a .zip you received, without installing anything. It's handy on an office computer where you can't install WinRAR or 7-Zip, on a Chromebook, or on a phone where the file manager won't open the archive. Everything happens on your device: the files are packed and unpacked by code running in your browser, and nothing is uploaded.

How zip compression works

A zip file stores each file separately, usually compressed with the Deflate method. Deflate looks for repeated runs of bytes and replaces later copies with short references to the first one, then codes the result so common symbols take fewer bits. At the end of the zip is a directory listing every file, its size, its date and where it starts. That directory is what lets this tool list a zip's contents almost instantly, before unpacking anything.

How much a file shrinks depends on how repetitive it is:

So if you zip twenty phone photos for a visa application, the zip will be about the same size as the photos. The benefit is one tidy file instead of twenty. Choose None (just pack) for files like these: it's much faster and barely bigger.

Example

You need to send your CA a salary slip PDF for each month, Form 16 and a CSV of your mutual fund transactions. Drop all fourteen files in, type the folder name "ITR documents 2026" and press Create zip. You get ITR documents 2026.zip, and when your CA unzips it everything lands in one neatly named folder. If two files share a name, the second is saved as "name (2)" so nothing is overwritten.

Unsafe names and "zip slip"

A zip entry's name is a path, and a crafted zip can contain names like ../../startup/run.bat or /etc/passwd. A careless unzip program would write those files outside the folder you chose, which is a known attack called zip slip. This tool flags any entry whose path contains a .. step, starts with a slash or backslash, or starts with a drive letter, and it never extracts them. Password-protected entries are listed but can't be opened here.

Limits

• 2 GB total and 10,000 files. The browser holds the whole zip in memory, so these limits stop a tab from crashing. On a phone with little memory, the practical limit can be lower.
• Dates are stored in the zip as local time without a time zone, to the nearest two seconds. That's part of the zip format, not this tool.
• Downloading many files one by one: browsers may ask whether to allow several downloads. For more than a handful, the single zip option is easier.
• Other formats such as .rar and .7z can't be opened here, only .zip.

Zipping without this tool

On Windows 11, right-click the files and choose "Compress to ZIP file". On Windows 10, it's Send to, then "Compressed (zipped) folder". On a Mac, right-click and choose Compress. On Android, the Files by Google app can extract zips, and on an iPhone the Files app opens a zip when you tap it.