Have you received a zip file via e-mail or you have to download it from the internet but you do not know how to do it on your iOS device? Do you want to save a zip file on iPhone or iPad but you do not know the correct procedure to perform? In this short guide I’ll explain quickly how to save zip on iPhone in an easy and fast way, keeping the archive in the device or on iCloud Drive so as to access it whenever you want and extract it with a dedicated application.
Despite being a very old format, compressed archives better known as zip files are still widely used all over the world not because of the ability to compress the size of a very heavy folder but also to enclose multiple files in a single archive; in this way, if you had to send more files via e-mail or upload to a cloud, using a zip-locked folder you could save yourself the process of having to select multiple files simply by uploading a single zip file.
So if you do not know how to save a zip file on the iPhone and iPad that you received via email or you have to download it from the internet, I’ll explain in the next paragraph the correct procedure to follow.
How to save zip on iPhone and iPad
If you do not already have an application installed in the iPhone that can manage and unzip zip files, such as Zip Extractor or WinZip, to store a zip on iOS the procedure to follow is as follows:
- Reach with the Safari browser the zip file you want to save to your device (or open a message/e-mail that contains the archive and select it)
- you will see a screen with the big icon of a zip file in the middle, choose Open in “File”
- if a different item appears from this you can tap on More … and select Save to File
- in this section you can decide to save the zip file on iPhone or on a cloud service configured in the phone as iCloud Drive or Google Drive
- to save a zip on iPhone or iPad select the item On iPhone and select one of the folders already in the iPhone (you can not create new ones) and tap on Add that appears in the upper right
- to store the zip file on iCloud Drive or other similar services, select them from the list and choose the destination folder, then tap Add which appears at the top right
In this way you have saved a zip file in the iPhone or iPad in a correct and fast way. Now you can access the zip as many times as you want because it is stored locally on your iOS device or in one of your cloud spaces; as you may have noticed the File application does not allow you to extract the contents of the compressed folders, but you can have a preview of the contents and possibly open them if they are in a compatible format and recognized by iOS (jpeg, pdf, etc …). To extract a zip file saved on iPhone and iPad you will have to download an application like Zip Extractor or WinZip already mentioned at the beginning of this guide.
Most likely in future versions of iOS and already at the release of iOS 12 we could attend the introduction of important new features within the File application such as extracting archives compressed in zip or creating new folders locally and not exclusively on configured cloud services.
The procedure indicated in this article explains how to save zip files on iPhone directly from Safari but the operations to follow are the same if you receive a zip as an attachment via e-mail, Telegram or other channels.