Terminal is an application that provides provides text-based access to the operating system. In contrast to the mostly graphical nature of the user experience of OS X, terminal provides a command lined interface that connects to the operating system.
Terminal is located in the Utilities folder, within the Applications folder on your Mac. You can also access it by searching for Terminal using OSX's search function, located in the top right part of the screen within the Finder or by using the search function in the upper center of the screen from your launchpad.
Windows/PC users: Try WinRAR should a workaround be needed to unzip a folder!
Steps to Unzip Files on a Mac
1. Move .zip File to the Desktop
Move your desired .zip file to the desktop, it will make it easier to find your .zip file.
2. Open Terminal
You can search for Terminal in your Mac by clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the upper right corner or locate it in the Utilities folder, which is in the Applications folder. You can also search for Terminal in your Mac's Launchpad.
3. Change Directory to Desktop
When you have terminal open, type in the following commands-
Last login: Wed Jan 28 13:47:29 on console
Joshuas-MacBook-Pro-2:~ joshuaerickson$ cd desktop
(Commands to type are in BOLD)
This means to Change Directory to Desktop.
4. Unzip File
Type:
unzip {name of your zipped file}.zip
Last login: Wed Jan 28 13:47:29 on console
Joshuas-MacBook-Pro-2:~ joshuaerickson$ cd desktop
Joshuas-MacBook-Pro-2:desktop joshuaerickson$ unzip test.zip
Terminal will then spit out a few lines of code indicating that your zip file has been unzipped and the files within the folder should now be available on your desktop.