Alternatively called compacting, compressing is taking one or more files and combining them or making them smaller by utilizing an algorithm in a compression utility. Commonly, file compression removes redundancies or specific data that is not essential (e.g., a tiny JPEG for use on a web page).

What are the benefits of compressed files?

Compressed files (e.g., .zip files) make it so users can share and download a single file, rather than getting multiple files from many different locations or links. Compression has greatly improved the speeds at which images and music can be downloaded and reduces load times of Internet sites.

Artifacts, bzip2, Compressed file, Compression utility, Crunch, Explode, Extract, Gzip, Huffman Code, Lossless compression, Lossly compression, Pack, RAR, Software terms, Stuff, Uncompress, Zip, Zoo

  • How to compress or make files into one file.
  • How to compress a large video file.
  • How to extract or decompress a compressed file.
  • See the compact command page for the Windows compress command.
  • See the Linux compress command page for additional information about this command.