MacOS – “Compress file” in Catalina sets wrong permissions on ZIP file

archivefindermacospermissionzip

When zipping one or more files via Finder (Right click on file → Compress) the created the ZIP file has permissions set to rw------- / 600.

When I use the zip command in Terminal, permissions are set as expected rw-r--r-- / 644.

All of this started to happen after I upgraded to Catalina last weekend.

Before, all ZIP files were created with permissions rw-r--r-- / 644, regardless if it was created via Finder or Terminal.

It looks like something is broken in the Finder command an/or Archive Utility.app

Do you know any fix for this?

This is really annoying, when uploading a zip file to an FTP server. Today a client called that he can't download the file. It took me a while to figure out what happened.

Clarification: The question is not about how to fix the FTP upload. It is about how to make Finder / Archive utility behave in the in same way as before, using macOS Mojave.

Best Answer

The Finder and Archive Utility are not broken; the change in permissions will be deliberate.

It looks like something is broken in the Finder command an/or Archive Utility.app

Increasing Security

Apple's security engineers will likely argue that the new user only read write permissions, 0600, are correct and that zip is now wrong. Limiting default permissions is the direction macOS is heading.

Automator or AppleScript

Instead of fighting Apple, consider creating an Automator service or AppleScript to compress your files. You can then control the final permissions of the archive.