TUAW's Daily Mac App: Stuffit Expander

Being able to decompress the plethora of archive types that are flying about the intertubes these days is essential. Stuffit Expander, the free extract-only part of the Stuffit suite is a great utility to have when Finder, or even the Unarchiver, just can't help you out.

There are quite a few free extraction tools available for the Mac. We've got the Unarchiver and TinyExpander just to name a few, but Smith Micro's Stuffit Expander handles several file formats that most others just can't, including Smith Micro's .sitx files, with aplomb.

It's simple to use, either open the archive from Finder with Stuffit Expander, drag-and-drop the file onto the Expander program or open the archive directly within the app. You can even just drag-and-drop your file onto Stuffit Expander's dock icon to quickly extract the file. If you're going to use it as your primary archive extractor you can also assign various different archive file formats to Stuffit Expander from within the program preferences.

When other extractors just can't cope with that unusual archive type, Stuffit Expander steps in. From MIME, StuffitX and yEncode, to AppleSingle, ARC and .btoa files, Stuffit Expander can get you what you need and for that reason, regardless of whether you use the Unarchiver or its kin, it's an essential free Mac app.

Stuffit Expander is available for free from the Mac App Store.

View Tags

Source: http://itunes.apple.com/app/stuffit-expander/id405580712?mt=…

Categories

Software Mac

Being able to decompress the plethora of archive types that are flying about the intertubes these days is essential. Stuffit Expander,...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

10 Comments

Filter by:

Adrian von Gegerfelt

Oh no, please, I was hoping to never see any Stuffit programs or archives ever again!

I use The Unarchiver to expand non-zip files, and MacOS X's built in ZIP compress and expand for everything else.

July 28 2011 at 4:21 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

bonusbox

how badly must i want something to download this software?
i've come a cross wmv's and realplayer files i wanted to view and i have yet to install the players for these. it's a sacrifice but it's for the greater good.

July 28 2011 at 1:05 AM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to bonusbox's comment

Russo

Get Flip4Mac.

July 28 2011 at 6:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

D R

StuffIt [all versions including this one] must be expunged from the Internet. They are poorly written and endlessly hassle you to pay for the full version or update to the new version every year. This is one application that must die.

July 27 2011 at 11:49 PM Report abuse Permalink +2 rate up rate down Reply

Scott Gant

I got The Unarchiver from the App Store...it uncompresses just about every compression form out there. Even ones that were like on the Amiga and things like that. Very impressive.

July 27 2011 at 6:33 PM Report abuse Permalink +2 rate up rate down Reply

AJH

This app is totally a must have for my many BinHex files.

/sarcasm off

July 27 2011 at 3:40 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

Joshua Miller

Stuffit Expander was handy back in the mid '90s on my Quadra 605 with a 160 MB hard drive, but right now my MacBook Pro has 150 GB used and 150 GB still available. Do these compression utilities have much use in the days of big and relatively inexpensive storage?

July 27 2011 at 3:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Joshua Miller's comment

Spock

It's not as much about saving space anymore, but being able to create a single file archive, either for transferring to someone else or for long term storage is still useful. In those cases though, using any format that is tied to a specific program (such as SITX) is unwise.

July 27 2011 at 4:44 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

Spock

Um, pretty much the only thing you can't open with The Unarchiver and need Stuffit Expander for is SITX archives, and that's only because it's their way of forcing people to use it.

This post is supporting that.

July 27 2011 at 3:14 PM Report abuse Permalink +2 rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Spock's comment

AJH

I thought that The Unarchiver had at least partial support for SitX files?

July 27 2011 at 3:40 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply