Archivers for macOS. Free Archivers for Mac OS X

Below you will find free programs distributed under licenses

7-Zip is one of the best free archivers. The program has a high compression and extraction speed, supports setting a password for the archive and works with the following formats: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, WIM, can unpack ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO , LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.

B1 Free Archiver

B1 Free Archiver is a free multi-platform file archiver. In addition, the program can act as file manager. The archiver has been translated into more than 30 languages ​​and works under operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Android. B1 Free Archiver supports functions such as compression, decompression and encryption (password setting) for ZIP and B1's own format.

Gone are the days when archivers were used solely to reduce file sizes in order to write as many of them as possible onto one floppy disk. Today, the main purpose of these applications is to record multiple files into one archive for ease of distribution and storage. This is the type of utility that, although not one of the most important, is still used quite regularly.

BetterZip

One of the most famous, popular and advanced archivers. It opens archives of almost all known formats, can create archives (although in this case the support for formats is not so wide), and also allows you to view the contents of the archive without first unpacking it. It is possible to create protected archives and test existing ones. The only drawback of the program is that it is paid.

BetterZip

Keka

It is also a fairly well-known archiver, popular due to its free nature. Capable of unpacking archives of most existing formats. It can also create archives, but the number of formats is not so wide (for example, it is not possible to create RAR archives). It is believed that the main drawback of this program is its not the most attractive icon.

Keka

WinZip for Mac

A “classic” from the world of Windows, which also came to OS X. A very advanced solution with good functionality and some useful additional features. At the same time, this same archiver is the most expensive of all that we are considering today.

WinZip for Mac

Zipeg

A free and very simple application designed only for unpacking archives, including those protected by passwords. All most popular formats are supported. If you don't need to create archives, then Zipeg can be good decision. There is a version for both OS X and Windows.

Zipeg

The Unarchiver

It is also a very simple utility that can only unpack archives. The most popular formats are supported, which is quite enough for most users. Additional features quite a bit, but this is fully justified by the absolute freeness of the application. This utility is one of the most popular.

Starting this review with such a title, I realized that not all readers would agree with me. There are so many apps on the Mac Appstore that work with archives, why is BetterZip the only one? I'll try to explain my point of view.

When choosing an archiver for Mac, I was guided by the following criteria:

• Ability to archive and unpack all popular archive formats. Among the “desktop” ones, these are ZIP, RAR and 7Z. It would be desirable to be able to create archives of the less popular GZip and BZip. One ZIP format there is not enough in the built-in archiver. Sometimes you need to work with RAR archives, it is often used on servers for incremental Reserve copy files.
• View the contents of the archive without the need to unpack, as well as update files in the archive. This is generally already a de facto standard for archivers, to which many are accustomed using WinZip and WinRAR. It's not at all convenient without it.
• Finder context menu integration. First of all, archiving selected files from the context menu.
• Flexible settings for creating archives and compatibility of created archives with Windows. These include archiving profiles and ignoring OS X service files and folders (have you seen what an archive created by built-in tools looks like in Windows?).
• Application design. This is where I get really boring when I nitpick the design of Mac apps and their icons. I appreciate OS X for its unique design and ease of use and I can’t calmly look at programs that look like hello from the 90s. Perhaps this point is not critical for everyone, but I am sure that I am not the only one.
• Application support. Personally, I rarely use apps latest version which was released 5 years ago.

Which archivers could have been included in this review, but were not included and why:

What BetterZip lacks is a library in Automator. It would be cool to be able to automate the process of creating or unpacking archives.

Let me remind you that BetterZip can be downloaded from the official website. It is possible to use the program for educational purposes. Cost today - $19.95 .

Thanks to Robert Rezabek for providing the BetterZip license.

The archiver is one of the most important and first installed programs on any computer, since most programs and any other information are most conveniently transferred in an archive. And the point here is not even that in the archive the total file size becomes smaller due to compression, but just the convenience of sharing one file. This is understandable - it’s easier to upload and download one file than, for example, 1283 photos.

In Mac OS, as in Windows, by default there is a built-in utility for opening zip archives, which somehow simplifies the initial work, but you will not be able to create an archive or open an archive of the more popular .rar format until you download something more powerful, like WinRar or 7zip. But, unfortunately, they only work on Windows.

If you have operating system Mac OS then you will most likely be surprised that open .rar archive on Mac standard means impossible. To do this you will need special software - an archiver. Luckily, there are plenty of them for Mac, and most of them are free. We have selected the most popular free archivers for Mac OS and compared their convenience. We will talk about how to open any archive on a Mac faster and more conveniently in this article.

The best program in terms of price/quality ratio (because it is free and of high quality) turned out to be the archiver (or rather dearchiver) The Unarchiver. This is an excellent example of free software that quickly and easily solves a given problem - it allows unpack archives of many different formats on Mac OS, including open.pap.

Since in this article we are only considering the issue of opening archives, we will not talk about programs that can be used to create them. Read our article about them. Unfortunately, on Apple computers it's more convenient to do this different programs, but there is no universal and free one yet.

So, The Unarchiver - free program, which is also available for download in the official Apple AppStore, which is a guarantee of security for your operating system.

The program can open (unzip) great amount various formats, including the most popular: rar, zip, 7zip and others.

The program is absolutely free and easy to use. Just install it from in a standard way. After that, in the settings you can select a list of formats that the program will automatically open. The main archive formats are selected by default, so you don't have to change anything if you don't know why you need it.

Now, to open any archive, you just need to double-click on it, and its contents will automatically be unpacked into the same folder next to it. That's all, now opening any archive on Mac is absolutely no problem for you.

It’s also worth adding that if for some reason you don’t want to install the program on your computer, but you need to open the archive urgently and right now, you can use an unarchiver website; just recently we talked about a service that knows.

In today's article we will talk about the so-called archiver for Mac users. When working with a computer, it is very important to be able to use archiving software. If you do not have an archiver installed, you will not be able to extract file formats such as RAR, 7Z, GZIP and others. Many Mac users mistakenly believe that the built-in file compression system can handle this task. In fact, the built-in tools will only suffice when working with ZIP archives. Therefore, in order to avoid difficulties when working with all popular archive formats, we recommend reading this article to the end.

What does the word archiver mean?

An archiver is a program for simultaneous packaging of any number of files for the purpose of copying, sending and storing them. Thanks to compression methods, archivers can reduce the size of files added to them. Another one useful feature For many archivers, this is the ability to set a password for the created archive, without entering which the user will not be able to open any of the files contained in the archive.

Overview of popular archive formats

The name of the world's most popular archive format originates from PKWare. Today this archive format is found everywhere. ZIP supports splitting the archive into parts, password protection, and adding comments. The main advantage of ZIP is its ubiquity and support even by programs that are indirectly related to archives.

GZ (GZIP, GNU ZIP) uses the same file compression algorithm as regular ZIP. This format is widely used in the world UNIX systems, and does not stand out with anything special except, in fact, compression. In terms of compression quality, GZIP cannot compete on an equal footing with more modern formats, although it does not need to because it is a very popular format in the UNIX world (just like ZIP outside of UNIX systems).

Just because GZIP can't compress multiple files into a single archive doesn't mean that UNIX users won't need to create archives from multiple files. In this case, the TAR format comes to the rescue, which does not support data compression, but allows you to combine several different files into one.

This format was developed by Evgeny Roshal. The compression quality of this format is superior to ZIP, and when working with some file types, the difference is noticeable. The main advantage of RAR is highly efficient compression, provided both by the efficiency of the algorithm and the ability to compress files in the archive as a single data stream. Another advantage is RAR’s resistance to various types of damage, especially if special information was added during archiving to restore it.

7Z is positioned as an archive format with high compression efficiency. It compresses really well, but at the same time it loads a lot RAM. This drawback also appears during unpacking. In terms of compression quality, 7Z can sometimes even outperform RAR, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

5 Reasons to Compress Files on Mac

Cataloging. During archiving, the structure of files and folders, including subfolders, is compressed into a single file. After unpacking the archive, you will receive exactly the same structure. Now let's imagine that you need to transfer over the network the entire contents of drive D (E, G, F - the letter does not matter), which contains hundreds or thousands of folders...

Transferring a large number of files will take a long time, given that online storage services only allow you to upload a few files at a time. Using a Mac archiver, you simply create an archive of drive D, i.e. transfer all data to one file. After unpacking, you will have an exact copy of your D drive on the remote computer.

Compression. Using special algorithms, you can compress almost all files on your computer, thereby reducing their size. Sometimes it is possible to reduce the archive size by several times compared to the original data. Of course, you can't use the data until you unpack it. However, if you store rarely used information on your hard drive, then archiving is The best way save disk space. Below in this article you will find the answer to the question “How to easily compress files on Mac?”

Data security. Archive programs provide the ability to add recovery information to the archive, making it possible to “cure” the archive even if it is damaged on the hard drive or external storage device. Having recovery information slightly increases the archive size, but in most cases you won't notice the difference.

If you want to hide files from someone's eyes, then archiving with a password is exactly what you need. Most archivers have this important function for data protection. By the way, take your password choice seriously. It shouldn't be too simple or obvious, but it's important to remember because there will be no recovery path with security questions. And remember that this method is not perfect. More and more programs are appearing on the Internet that can even pick up complex passwords and hack archives.

Space saving. Let's say you need to free up some space, because the volume hard drive small. Try storing unimportant files and backups files in archives. Compress files on Mac and feel free to delete them after archiving. You can unpack them at any time.

It's important to remember that not all files are compressed with significant savings, for example, the size of photos is reduced from every 50 MB by just a few MB. In the same time Microsoft documents Word or files in graphic editor Adobe Photoshop can be significantly compressed: from fifty to three megabytes. Music and video files are poorly compressed, but if there are a large number of them, you can use archiving.

File transfer. When transferring files online, e.g. e-mail or in Skype, we cannot attach an entire folder to a message, but only individual photos or documents. Therefore, it is extremely convenient to make one file out of many, and subsequently send it. In this case, the archiver comes to the rescue. For example, you can send your entire Holiday Photos folder at once, creating one archive. In addition, the archive will be transmitted over the network faster (due to, albeit slight, photo compression).

Are Mac's built-in archiving tools up to the job?

As you already know, archiving files has long been a common practice. However, if we are talking about Mac devices, their users face difficulties when working with archived data. Because the built-in Mac archiving utility only supports formats like GZIP and ZIP, you won't be able to create an archive or open an archive in any other popular format. In addition to the above, there is no option for the user to change the compression ratio.

Taking all these factors into account, Mac users should consider installing additional software for archiving to be able to work with various archive formats and even more.