Automatically unzip/untar downloaded files?

Question

Is there a way to automatically unzip/untar everything I download? Preferably without installing anything (I already have enough programs running all the time) and something that works with all browsers.

Solution 1

I think this is a horrible idea, it screams "security risk" to me.

Now the disclaimer is out of the way;

Why not just run a scheduled task over your downloads directory? once every 5 minutes run a shell script that essentially:

unzips all the archives (unzip *.zip)

deletes them (rm -f *.zip)

Solution 2

One way to do it is to select "Open with" instead of Download in the dialog box that is shown when you click on a link to zip file.

After the download the zip will be opened in the program you use to handle zip files and you can extract into desired folder.

If you always want to do this and skip the usual Download dialog, you can check the "Do this automatically for files like this from now on" check box.

Comments

[nik]

I have never heard of such a requirement. Why extract before you want to look at the files, and waste disk space?

[Gnoupi]

Or maybe he downloads a lot of zip files which he opens right away, and he is tired of unzipping them by hand.

[drby]

Exactly. I usually download zipped source code, library files, themes, and small utilities. I never keep them lying around as zip files. And since I always extract them anyway, it would be nice to automate it.

[drby]

How is it a security risk?

[The Muffin Man]

On OSX all you have to do is double click the zip and it automatically extracts it for you. 100% of the time when I download a file that is zipped I just want to get the files, I don't care about looking inside the zip and clicking 3 buttons just to get them.