

Many MacOS versions allow you to double-click a TAR.GZ file to extract it. TAR.GZ is great for Unix users and by extension, Mac users. It's suitable for both Windows and Mac users. ZIP is one of the most popular compression methods, known for its quick compression and extraction times. There are different kinds of compression, so it's important to make sure that you use the best compression method for your situation. That way you don't need to copy multiple files or worry about the transfer size. Likewise, if you wanted to quickly download the contents of a directory on your hosting account (for example, your entire public_html directory), you could create a compressed version of that, then download the entire archive file in one go. You can do that by compressing the images. So the natural thing to do would be to make the file size smaller. If, for example, you wanted to send a few pictures via email to a friend, you might find that the pictures take a long time to send because their file size is so large. This grouped together file is called an archive file. By compressing, you make the file size smaller, and, if there are multiple files, they are grouped together. There are various reasons to compress files, but the foremost is that you want to make the file more manageable.

This smaller file can then be uncompressed and returned to their separate, regular sized files. File compression is the process of taking several (or many) files and combining them into one, smaller file.
