The archiver is one of the most important and primarily installed programs on any computer, since most programs and any other information are most conveniently transferred to the archive. And the point is not even that the total file size in the archive becomes smaller due to compression, but just the convenience of sharing one file. It is understandable - it is 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. Unfortunately, they only work on Windows.

If you have operating system Mac OS, you will most likely be surprised that open .rar archive on Mac standard means impossible. This will require special software- archiver. Fortunately, 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 tell you about the faster and more convenient to open any archive on Mac in this article.

The best program in terms of price / quality ratio (because it is free and of high quality) was The Unarchiver. This is a great example free software which quickly and easily solves the task - allows unpack archives of many different formats on Mac OS, including open.pap.

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

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) a huge number of different formats, including the most popular ones: 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. Major archive formats are highlighted 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 it's not a problem for you to open any archive on Mac.

It is also worth adding that if for any reason you do not want to install the program on your computer, and you need to open the archive urgently and right now, you can use the unzip site, recently we talked about a service that knows.

Gone are the days when archivers were used solely to reduce the size of files in order to write as many of them as possible on a single floppy disk. Today, the main purpose of these applications is to write multiple files into one archive for easy distribution and storage. These are the types of utilities that, while not being among the most important, are still used fairly regularly.

BetterZip

One of the most famous, popular and advanced archivers. Opens archives of almost all known formats, is able to create archives (although in this case the support for formats is not so wide), it 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 that is popular due to its free nature. Able to unpack archives of most existing formats. He also knows how to create archives, but the number of formats is not so wide (for example, there is no way 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

"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 the most popular formats are supported. If you don't need to create archives, then Zipeg can become good decision... There is a version for both OS X and Windows.

Zipeg

The Unarchiver

Also 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.

Containing a tool for working with archives, macOS is also originally endowed with such. True, the capabilities of the built-in archiver are very limited - Archive Utility, integrated into the "apple" OS, allows you to work only with ZIP and GZIP (GZ) formats. Naturally, this is not enough for most users, so in this article we will talk about software tools for working with archives on macOS, which are much more functional than the basic solution.

This archiver is a comprehensive solution for working with archives in the macOS environment. BetterZip provides the ability to unpack all common formats used for data compression, with the exception of SITX. You can use it to create archives in ZIP, 7ZIP, TAR.GZ, BZIP, and if you install the console version of WinRAR, the program will also support RAR files. The latter can be downloaded from the official website of the developer, the link to which you will find in.

Like any advanced archiver, BetterZip can encrypt compressed data, can split large files into fragments (volumes). Present in it useful function search inside the archive, working without the need for unpacking. Likewise, you can extract individual files without unpacking the entire contents at once. Unfortunately, BetterZip is distributed on a paid basis, and upon completion trial period it can only be used to unpack archives, not create them.

StuffIt Expander

Like BetterZip, this archiver supports all common data compression formats (25 titles) and even slightly outperforms its competitor. StuffIt Expander implements full support RAR, for which you don't even need to install third party utilities, and it also works with SIT and SITX files, which the previous application also cannot boast of. Among other things, this software works not only with ordinary, but also with password-protected archives.

StuffIt Expander is presented in two versions - free and paid, and it is logical that the possibilities of the second are much wider. For example, it can be used to create self-extracting archives and work with data on optical and hard drives... The program includes tools for creating disk images and Reserve copy information that is contained on drives. Moreover, you can set your own schedule to create a backup of files and directories.

WinZip Mac

Hamster Free Archiver

Minimalistic outwardly and functional archiver for macOS, very simple and easy to use. To compress data into Hamster Free Archiver uses the ZIP format, and it allows you to open and unpack not only the mentioned ZIP, but also 7ZIP, as well as RAR. Yes, this is significantly less than the solutions discussed above, but this will be enough for many users. If desired, it can be set as the default tool for working with archives, for which it is enough to refer to the application settings.

As the name implies, Hamster Free Archiver is distributed free of charge, which undoubtedly sets it apart from other similar programs. According to the developers, their archiver provides quite high degree compression. In addition to the usual compression and decompression of data, it allows you to specify the path to save or place them in the folder with the original file. On this set functionality"Hamster" ends.

Keka

Another free archiver for macOS, which, moreover, is in many ways not inferior to its paid competitors. With Keka, you can view and extract files contained in RAR, TAR, ZIP, 7ZIP, ISO, EXE, CAB and many more archives. You can pack data in ZIP, TAR and variations of these formats. Large files can be broken into parts, which will significantly simplify their use and, for example, uploading to the Internet.

There are not many settings in Keka, but each of them is really necessary. So, referring to the main menu of the application, you can specify the only way to save all the extracted data, select an acceptable compression rate for files when compressing, set it as the default archiver and set associations with file formats.

The Unarchiver

Archiver this application can be called only with a slight stretch. The Unarchiver is more of a compressed data viewer whose only capability is to unpack it. Like all of the above programs, it supports common formats (over 30), including ZIP, 7ZIP, GZIP, RAR, TAR. Allows you to open them, regardless of the program in which they were compressed, how much and what encoding was used.

The Unarchiver is distributed free of charge, and for this we can safely forgive its functional "modesty". It will interest those users who often have to work with archives, but only in one direction - exclusively for viewing and extracting packed files to a computer, no more.

Conclusion

In this short article, we covered the main features of six archivers for macOS. Half of them are paid, half are free, but in addition, each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and which one to choose is up to you. Hopefully this material was helpful to you.

Mac OS X comes standard with the Archive Utility, but it has limited capabilities. And only supports a limited range of ZIP, GZIP (.gz) formats. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to third party manufacturers archiver programs. The rar d format is not supported by Mac OS X. Most archivers for mac os x have a problem with files zipped in Windows. More precisely, not with the files themselves, but with their names written in Cyrillic. The most correct here is RAR Extractor Free.

Free archivers.

The Unarchiver

Free app presented in Mac App Store.

Supported formats for unpacking: Zip, Zipx, RAR, 7z, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, LZMA, XZ, CAB, MSI, NSIS, EXE, ISO, BIN, MDF, Stufflt, ARJ, ARC, zoo, LZH and more rarely used formats.

The utility is built in instead of the standard archiver and does an excellent job with its functions.

Among the shortcomings: it does not always work stably with RAR archives, sometimes it gives an error message about the archive, despite the fact that the archive is working properly. This error seen in password files and multipart archives, in which case I use Stuffit Expander. At the same time, it remains my main unzip.

Website: http://unarchiver.c3.cx

Stufflt Expander

SmithMicro's full Stifflt for Mac is a paid $ 29.99 package that works in 30 formats but does not allow you to compress rar files. But the free version of Stufflt Expander for Mac perfectly unpacks rar files and I have it as a second unzip.

Website: http://my.smithmicro.com

Keka

Free archiver for mac OS X. Can compress data in the following formats: 7z, Zip, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, DMG, ISO. Unpack from RAR, 7z, Lzma, Zip, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, ISO, EXE, CAB, PAX, ACE (PPC)

Website: http://www.kekaosx.com/ru/

RAR Extractor Free

Allows you to unpack archives in rar, zip, bzip, gzip, tar, 7-zip formats. The program is in the appstore. It works best with Cyrillic in file names. Paid version adds the following formats: xz, iso, lha, cab, cpio.

Of noteworthy free packages, perhaps that's all.

Paid archivers for Mac

WinRAR 5.0

Supports RAR, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE, TAR, GZip, UUE, ISO, BZIP2, Z and 7-Zip formats.

The free download contains a trial version for 40 days. The developer only provides a command line version.

Site: http://www.rarlab.com/ http://www.win-rar.com/

Archiver 2.0

Allows you to create and unpack rar archives, but for this, an additional plugin is used, which is installed automatically. The application is present in the Mac App Store, but in order to activate work with rar in this case, you need to enable this feature in the program settings.

Website: http://archiverapp.com/

Compress Files for Mac

The program with a convenient design allows you to pack and unpack various file formats, but the rar format is not in this list. There is a Trial version

Site: http://www.apimac.com/mac/compressfiles/

Starting this review with such a title, I realized that not all readers would agree with me. There are a lot of archive applications in the Mac Appstore, why is BetterZip the only one? I will 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. From "desktop" it is ZIP, RAR and 7Z. It is desirable to be able to create archives and less popular GZip and BZip. One ZIP format is not enough in the built-in archiver. Sometimes you need to work with RAR archives, it is often used on servers for incremental file backups.
• Viewing the contents of the archive without the need to unpack, as well as updating the files in the archive. In general, this is already a de facto standard for archivers, to which many are accustomed to using WinZip and WinRAR. It is not at all convenient without it.
• Integration into context menu Finder. First of all, archiving the selected files from the context menu.
• Flexible settings for creating archives and compatibility of the created archives with Windows. These are both archiving profiles and ignoring OS X service files and folders (have you seen what a built-in archive looks like in Windows?).
• Application design. This is where I get really bored when I find fault with the design of Mac apps and their icons. I appreciate OS X for its unique design and ease of use and can not calmly look at programs that look like hello from the 90s. Perhaps this point is not critical for everyone, but I am sure that it is not the only one.
• Application support. Personally, I rarely use applications latest version which was released 5 years ago.

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

What BetterZip lacks are the libraries in Automator. It would be great 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 informational purposes. Cost for today - $19.95 .

Thanks to Robert Rezabek for providing the BetterZip license.