Archiving and compression tools inside elementary OS Files

Elementary OS is built around a calm, distraction-free desktop, and that philosophy extends to how its file manager handles compressed archives. Rather than asking users to memorise command-line flags, the Pantheon environment opens, creates and manages archives through the same familiar interface used for ordinary folders. Newcomers arriving from Windows or macOS expect a dedicated utility for ZIP, RAR or TAR handling, and the pleasant surprise is that nothing extra needs installing.

For Australian users, where many households rely on the National Broadband Network and its variable upload speeds, having a smooth way to shrink documents before emailing them or pushing them to cloud storage is more than a convenience. Tax time falls between July and October, when receipts, statements and ATO correspondence pile up. Compressing these files before sending them to an accountant in Sydney keeps attachments under email limits and reduces the chance of upload timeouts over a contended NBN connection.

The walkthrough below looks at how elementary OS's file manager deals with archives, from the simplest right-click operation to more advanced workflows involving encryption, scripts and the wider Pantheon desktop. No prior Linux experience is required, and every step works on the current LTS release available through the project's download server.

Understanding how Files handles archives by default

When a user downloads a ZIP file from a browser, or receives an archive attached to a mail message, Files treats it almost like any other container. A double-click peeks inside, exposing the contents as a navigable folder, while a right-click offers options to extract, view properties or open the archive with an external tool. The behaviour comes from file-roller, integrated through contractor scripts that elementary OS maintains for its desktop.

The integration is quiet by design. There is no banner advertising a separate archive manager, no plugin list to maintain, and no licence dialog to dismiss. For a university student in Perth downloading a course pack, or a small business owner in Hobart sharing design assets with a client, the path from download to usable file rarely requires more than two or three clicks. This frictionless approach is one reason the distribution earns praise from reviewers who value getting work done over tinkering.

Elementary OS keeps its archive support deliberately minimal compared to distributions that ship with full-fat file-roller extensions. RAR extraction works out of the box on most builds thanks to unar being preinstalled, but creating RAR archives is not enabled because the format is proprietary. Users who need that capability typically add an open-source alternative such as 7z or fall back to ZIP, which remains the lingua franca for sharing files across operating systems.

Creating archives through the context menu

To create a new archive, the user selects one or more files in Files, opens the right-click menu and chooses the compress option. A small dialog appears, asking for an archive name, a destination folder and a format. Available choices usually include ZIP, TAR, TAR with GZIP, TAR with BZ2 and 7Z, depending on which command-line utilities are present. ZIP is selected by default because it is the only format that every major operating system can open without extra software.

Behind the scenes, elementary OS relies on a small wrapper script that translates the dialog choices into the appropriate CLI invocation. Power users can inspect this script in the contractor folder, which makes the system easy to audit and modify. For someone in Brisbane uploading property photos to a real-estate portal, choosing TAR.GZ can shave a few megabytes off a folder of RAW images before the upload, especially on a connection that throttles after the first hundred megabytes.

One practical tip is to enable the option that automatically adds the .tar.gz extension, rather than leaving the file as a plain .tar that some recipients will struggle to open. The dialog defaults are sensible, but a small habit of double-checking the file extension saves confusion when the archive lands on a Windows machine in Adelaide or a MacBook in Canberra.

Extracting archives from emails, browsers and chat apps

Extraction is even simpler than creation. A double-click on a ZIP file opens it as a browsable folder, and dragging its contents out into a regular folder extracts them. Alternatively, the right-click extract option places everything in a folder of the same name beside the original archive. For someone in Darwin receiving weekly sales data from a head office in Melbourne, this workflow means the email attachment is ready to open in LibreOffice Calc within seconds of arriving.

For password-protected archives, Files prompts for a passphrase at extraction time. The prompt integrates with the system's secret service, so passwords stored in the GNOME Keyring or KeePassXC are filled in automatically once unlocked. This is helpful when dealing with sensitive records such as client invoices, legal documents or medical history files, all of which carry extra obligations under the Australian Privacy Principles outlined in the Privacy Act 1988.

When an archive arrives corrupted, perhaps because of an interrupted download over a flaky mobile hotspot in a regional area like Tamworth or Broken Hill, the file manager still tries to open it. Partial extraction can sometimes recover individual files even when the archive as a whole cannot be repaired. Pairing the file manager with a graphical tool like the GTK4 archive manager gives users a fallback for those edge cases, although most Australian households will rarely need it.

Encryption, password protection and the Privacy Act angle

Elementary OS supports both ZIP-with-password and 7Z-with-AES-256, depending on what utilities are installed. ZIP passwords are weak by modern standards because the format uses the legacy PKZIP stream cipher, which is fast to crack with current hardware. 7Z with AES-256 is a stronger choice for anything containing personal information, financial records or business-sensitive data, and is the format recommended by many Australian cybersecurity advisories for files sent to external parties.

The Privacy Act 1988 and the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme place clear obligations on businesses with an annual turnover above AUD 3 million, as well as on smaller entities handling health information. While elementary OS is consumer-grade software and cannot guarantee compliance on its own, the encryption tools inside Files make it straightforward to apply reasonable security measures. Encrypting an archive before emailing it to an accountant in Geelong or a lawyer in Parramatta adds a meaningful layer of protection that costs nothing and takes only a few seconds.

For very large encrypted transfers, splitting an archive into smaller chunks before rejoining them is sometimes necessary. Although Files does not provide a built-in split option, the underlying CLI tools do, and elementary OS's terminal app makes scripted workflows accessible. A user in a small firm in Launceston can save a one-line shell snippet in their home folder, then drag and drop a folder onto a small desktop file that invokes the script, getting split archives without ever opening a terminal window directly.

Handling large archives and working offline

A common pain point for people in remote parts of Australia is bandwidth. A property manager in Broome, or a researcher based in Alice Springs, might only have a satellite or mobile connection for parts of the day. In those contexts, compressing large media libraries, scientific datasets or drone footage into smaller archives is not optional but essential. The TAR.GZ option in Files gives a good balance between compression ratio and compatibility with Linux servers, while 7Z achieves better ratios when the archive will stay on Linux or be opened with the open-source 7-Zip on Windows.

When archiving directories that exceed several gigabytes, it pays to be aware of filesystem limits. Elementary OS defaults to ext4 for installations, which handles individual files well beyond the size of any practical archive, but FAT-formatted USB sticks used to ferry files between offices in Sydney and Newcastle will reject anything over 4 GB. Reformatting the USB stick to exFAT, or splitting the archive before copying, avoids the cryptic error that Files shows when a write fails at the limit.

Another practical habit is to store a checksum file alongside important archives. Elementary OS does not include a checksum button inside Files, but the file manager does respect sidecar files, so a small SHA256SUMS text file can sit beside the archive without interfering with anything. Verifying integrity after a long transfer over the NBN, or after copying files across multiple drives in a warm Adelaide warehouse, becomes a one-liner in the terminal rather than a guessing game.

Custom scripts, contractor actions and Pantheon integration

The Pantheon desktop is built around contractor actions, which are small script files that appear in the right-click menu of Files. Elementary OS ships several of these for archives, and users can write their own. A typical addition is a contractor that compresses a folder and copies the resulting archive to a clipboard-friendly path ready for pasting into a chat window. Another popular one runs a synchronisation script that mirrors an archive to an external drive whenever the file changes.

These scripts live in ~/.local/share/contractor or the system-wide equivalent, and they can be written in any language the system understands. For someone comfortable with a bit of bash, adding a custom archive action takes only a few minutes, and resources such as the elementarynow site collect community examples and Australian-focused tutorials. A freelance photographer in Cairns could build a contractor that creates a ZIP of a finished shoot, renames it with the date and client code, and uploads it through rclone to a cloud bucket, all triggered from a right-click in Files.

Integration with the wider desktop also extends to notifications and the multitasking view. When an archive extraction finishes, a small unobtrusive notification appears at the top of the screen, and the resulting folder can be pinned to the dock for quick access. Elementary OS treats these archive workflows as ordinary parts of the desktop rather than as separate utilities, which keeps the experience consistent whether the user is handling a single document or a multi-gigabyte project.

The takeaway for anyone using elementary OS is that the archive tools inside Files are quietly capable. They cover the everyday needs of compressing documents for email, extracting downloads from the web and handling password-protected transfers without requiring a separate application. Where the built-in options reach their limits, the underlying command-line utilities and contractor framework provide room to extend the workflow in sensible ways. Treating Files as the central place to manage archives keeps the desktop uncluttered and lets the user focus on the contents of their files rather than the mechanics of packaging them.