Non-Zipped Artifacts Now Available

GitHub Actions now supports uploading and downloading artifacts without automatic compression. Previously, the actions/upload-artifact action always zipped artifacts, requiring users to manually unzip files after download. This has been a common source of friction in CI/CD workflows.

Key Improvements

The new functionality addresses three major pain points:

• Single-file downloads: Users no longer need to unzip when downloading a single file through the browser
• Native file viewing: Artifacts can now be viewed directly in the browser for compatible formats (HTML, images, markdown, etc.), including on mobile browsers
• Eliminate double compression: Pre-compressed files (like ZIP or TAR archives) no longer get wrapped in an additional compression layer

Implementation Details

To use unzipped artifacts, you need to:

• Upgrade to actions/upload-artifact v7 or later
• Set the archive parameter to false in your workflow configuration
• Update to actions/download-artifact v8 or later for consistent behavior

Backwards compatibility: The archive parameter defaults to true, so existing workflows remain unchanged. Previously uploaded artifacts will continue to be zipped. Only new artifacts uploaded with v7 and the archive: false flag will be unzipped.

Action Items

Review your GitHub Actions workflows to identify where non-zipped artifacts would improve efficiency. Update the upload and download artifact actions to v7 and v8 respectively, then set archive: false for artifacts that don't require compression.