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TUAW's Daily Mac App: The Unarchiver

by Megan Lavey-Heaton May 27th 2011 at 3:00PM

The Unarchiver isn't a new utility to the Mac world, and we reviewed an earlier version of it. It's the Swiss Army knife of unarchiving programs and can handle pretty much any file, no matter how ancient, you throw at it. The native unarchiver for OS X is pretty solid in and of itself, but it's nice to have a utility such as Unarchiver around when you need something to tackle anything from Amiga PowerPacker files to StuffIt Archive files.

There are a number of unarchiving options, including when you want to create folders for the extracted files or alter the modification date, and the ability to move the original archive file to the trash after expanding the contents. The one thing you can't do is archive stuff. If you want to do that, you can use OS X's built-in archiver, buy the venerable StuffIt Deluxe ($49.99) or spring for the US$19.99 BetterZip.

However, Unarchiver is a free download in the Mac App Store, so it's definitely worth having as one of your basic Mac utilities.



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The Unarchiver isn't a new utility to the Mac world, and we reviewed an earlier version of it. It's the Swiss Army knife of...
 

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16 Comments

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asbjorn

I use The Unarchiver for all my unarchiving needs. I haven't had the need to open an archive it didn't support yet. Fabulous piece of software. For archiving, I use 7zX which archives with the unprecedented 7-zip format, which is both open source and has the best compression ratio available (at least for free).

May 29 2011 at 3:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Blaine Headrick

Unarchiver is the first program I downloaded the day I bought my first Mac. Way back in 2002. I'm not sure what I would do with out it

May 28 2011 at 3:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JustAnnuthaDewd

Oh come on! Did you guys REALLY suggest ponying up 50 bucks for Stuffit?

May 28 2011 at 12:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Cloudgazer

to make an archive I'd always just open darwin and type

tar -xf - directory_to_archive | gzip > archive_name.tgz

don't forget, just because it's a mac doesn't mean it's not also a unix machine :)

May 27 2011 at 11:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
anibalin

Is there a way that the extracted files gets near the original file? (like the system does with .zip files)

May 27 2011 at 7:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
5hRreDDy

If the Springy dev didn't have those major problems with all his data being lost then it can easily be the most highly recommended. Whether the big 'two point oh' will ever sees the light of day - who knows?

May 27 2011 at 5:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
5hRreDDy

If the Springy dev didn't have those major problems with all his data being lost then it can easily be the most highly recommended. Whether the big 'two point oh' will ever sees the light of day - who knows?

May 27 2011 at 5:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rob

The unarchiver is great at unarchiving many archives. But it still does not have official support for the new zipx format. For that format, try iZip. It is also free.

See http://www.izip.com/

To create archives, I recommend the free CleanArchiver program. It can exclude Mac Specific files that .DS_Store which is useful when you want to send the archive to a Windows user.

See http://www.sopht.jp/cleanarchiver/

The Unarchiver / CleanArchiver is a GREAT FREE Combination!

May 27 2011 at 4:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
brianmcashion

I love this app, but wish it had Growl support (mainly so I could get a heads-up when it's finished decompressing a big multi-part .rar). I've been trying Keka (which has Growl notifications), but it's a little hit-and-miss, and Rucksack is $20... kinda pricy.

Any suggestions for a Growl-notifying unarchiver?

May 27 2011 at 4:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ToSeek

Ah, but does it handle truly ancient formats, like PackIt ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PackIt )?

May 27 2011 at 3:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to ToSeek's comment
codeman38

Indeed it does!

May 27 2011 at 3:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
milkmage

yes.
http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver

May 27 2011 at 3:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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