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For my work I constantly need to unzip zip-archives. I know I can right-click and select "Extract here", but since I do this a lot, this is becoming annoying.

Is there a way to set the default action when double clicking a zip (or any other archive) to "Extract here"?

All tips are welcome!

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  • There is no way to set the double click action to default to "Extract Here". Double-clicking executes the "Open" action, and it defaults to a package manager for that. There's no way that I know of to change that default behavior.
    – Thomas Ward ♦
    Mar 12, 2018 at 15:59
  • You might have more luck making a keyboard shortcut to do that.
    – wjandrea
    Mar 12, 2018 at 18:04

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
8

It's much easier in 18.04! (I'm not sure since when this works)

In "Open With" set the application "Files" as default and that's it.

screenshot

Now when you right-click on the archive, "Extract Here" is the first entry in the context-menu and will be called on doubleclick.

screenshot

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  • 1
    Awesome, this was the comment I hoped for!
    – kramer65
    Oct 16, 2018 at 12:50
  • 1
    Ingenious. This should be the default out of the box.
    – Andreas
    Feb 19, 2021 at 16:30
0

Everything is possible on Linux!

Select a *.zip file with a right mouse click and go to properties. Instead of using a mouse, you can use Alt+Enter.

In the textbox, write file-roller -h 1. Select Add to list. In case you don't have it installed, use sudo apt install file-roller -y.

enter image description here

Then select file-roller and Set as default.

enter image description here

Now, file-roller is set as default. You can close the properties window. Now when you open a zip, it will be automatically decompressed for you. To do the same for *.tar.gz files (application/x-compressed-tar in general), skip adding file-roller to list as it's already there - only set as default.

Why does it work? Read the manual (man file-roller):

SYNOPSIS
   file-roller [OPTIONS...]  [FILE...]
OPTIONS
   -f, --extract
          Extract archives asking the destination folder and quit the program

   -h, --extract-here
          Extract archives using the archive name as destination folder and quit the program

1 Some people prefer file-roller -f instead of -h to choose the destination folder.

See also Archive manager that extracts into new folder named after archive

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