Mac OS X’s built-in Archive Utility is a handy tool that lets you easily expand ZIP files downloaded to your computer. However, the zip files by default stay behind, leaving your Downloads folder cluttered. Luckily, there’s a way to modify the preferences and have the downloaded zip files sent to your Trash.

Reaching the preference settings for Archive Utility is somewhat difficult, but can be found by going to System/Library/CoreServices/. From there, click on Archive Utility, and then go to Archive Utility>Preferences from your menu bar. The settings are divided into two sections as shown above, with the top half for expanding ZIP files, and the bottom half for compressing archives. Under the heading After expanding, select Move archive to Trash. You can also delete the archive itself or select a location for it to be moved(ie, a folder called ZIP files inside the Downloads folder).

Now, when you double-click zip files you download to your computer, the original zip file is moved automatically to your Trash.

I also changed the settings for saving expanded files to my Desktop rather than the default option of leaving the file in the same directory as the archive. I tend to reorganize files I download to my computer for quicker access in the future, and find it useful to have the expanded ZIP file available on my Desktop.

Source: Macworld