(If you want to specify a different location, you need to provide the full path instead of just the name.) Once you execute this command, Mac OS X will ask for the desired password (twice, for confirmation), and then create a Zip archive of your folder with your chosen name at the root level of your home folder. (Otherwise it will only archive the folder itself without its contents, which is not exactly useful.) Terminal will automatically insert the full path with escape characters if required.įor your information, the “ e” option stands for “encryption,” the “ j” for “junk the path” (otherwise the zip command will archive the complete folder hierarchy leading to your target folder, which you probably don’t want), and “ r” stands for “recursive,” which will force the zip command to include the entire contents of the folder in the archive. Instead of typing it, you can just type zip -ejr followed by a space and then drag-and-drop the target folder onto the command line. zip” extension, which the zip command will add automatically).Īnd is the complete name of the folder with its full path. is the name you want to give to the resulting archive file (without the “. As far as I can tell, in order to create a password-protected and encrypted archive of a folder, you need to type this in Terminal: Since I went through this myself two days ago, I thought I would share the result of my investigations. You have to use the command line interface.Īs per usual in the CLI world, the most simple things are not obvious and if you bring up the man page in Terminal for the zip command, you will spend a fair bit of time figuring out exactly which options you need. It’s just that it’s not accessible in the graphical user interface (GUI). The truth is that Mac OS X comes with its own feature for creating password-protected or encrypted Zip archives. Its interface is very lousy (especially for decompressing password-protected Zip archives, among other things) and there have been pretty significant bugs in the past. In addition, the StuffIt product family does not have a very good history under Mac OS X. But this third-party product is too expensive and feature-rich for my tastes. I know that you can purchase a third-party tool such as StuffIt Deluxe that provides such an option. It works fine for creating simple Zip archives that can then be shared with other Mac or PC users.īut this facility provides no option to create a password-protected or encrypted Zip archive. (I believe the command used to be called “ Archive…” in versions of Mac OS X prior to Mac OS X 10.5, also known as Snow Leopard.) Mac OS X’s user interface comes with a built-in facility for creating Zip archives, in the form of a command called “ Compress…” in the Finder’s “ File” menu or in the contextual action menu.

How to create a zip folder on mac