Buried in the bowels of your Mac’s operating system are a handful of utilities that you may (or may not) take for granted. One such utility, the Archive Utility, has a slew of customizable features. Archive Utility can work with many types of archives—others you might encounter include.bz,.gz and.tar. You can tell if it will work when the file is labeled with the standard zip icon.
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If you’ve ever sent, or received, a big file via email, you’ve undoubtably encountered a zip file. Double-click one of these and it expands to show files hidden inside. A zip file, or archive, takes up less space than the original files, so that your documents, images and whatnot are easier to send or store. But what do you do if a file won’t expand or you come across a different type of archive? Here are answers to frequently asked questions about working with compressed files on Mac OS X.
Q: How does compression work?
A: File compression technology looks for repeated data and writes archives that eliminate these repetitions to save space. You’ll find some files shrink a lot—compressed text files can be half the size of the originals—and others not so much. If you try to compress a JPEG file, for instance, you won’t see much benefit, as the JPEG format already includes compression.
Q: How do I make a zip file on my Mac?
A: To compress a file, a folder, or a group of files in Mac OS X, select the item(s) in the Finder and then either choose File -> Compress Item Name, or right-click on the selected item(s) and choose Compress Item Name. If you compress a single file, the process will be very quick. If you compress a large folder containing several gigabytes of data, it could take several minutes.
Q: How do I open a zip file that I’ve received?
A: To uncompress a zip archive, double-click it. A system utility called Archive Utility leaps into action automatically. Archive Utility can work with many types of archives—others you might encounter include .bz, .gz and .tar. You can tell if it will work when the file is labeled with the standard zip icon.
Q: I’d like to have my archives expanded to a specific folder. Can I do this?
A: First, find Archive Utility: it’s located at /System/Library/Core Services/Archive Utility. Double-click its icon, and it appears in your Dock. A menu will display, but it won’t show any window. Choose Archive Utility -> Preferences.
Here you’ll see the option to choose where expanded files are placed. By default, these files expand into their current folder (or directory). To change the default destination click on the Save Expanded Files menu and choose Into. In the sheet that appears, select a new folder. For example, if you often download files and would like to expand archives into a folder other than your Downloads folder, you can create a separate folder for these archives.
Q: I’ve got old zip archives all over my hard drive. Is there a way to get rid of them automatically?
A: Choose Archive Utility -> Preferences and click on the After Expanding menu. From here you can choose Move Archive To Trash, Delete Archive, or Move Archive To. For this latter option, you then choose a folder. It’s worth noting that this last option does not copy the archive to the location you select, but actually moves it. So if you select a folder on a different disk, the archive will be placed in that folder, then deleted from its original location. This is a good idea if you need to keep copies of archives for some reason.
Q: Do I have to use the zip format?
A: The zip format will fit the bill for 99.9 percent of people trying to compress a file. But if you’re a Unix person, you might be happy to find two other options in the Archive Format menu. Compressed Archive, also known as a .cpgz archive, is a common Unix compression format. Regular Archive, also known as a .cpio archive, puts a group of files into an archive without compressing them.
Even if you choose another format in this menu, you will only be able to create a different type of archive from within Archive Utility. Open the utility and choose File -> Create Archive, or press Command-K. If you wish to regularly create .cpgz or .cpio archives, put Archive Utility in your Dock so you can launch it easily.
Q: How do I open archives that Archive Utility can’t handle?
A: There are some types of archives that Archive Utility simply can’t handle. One common format is .rar or Roshal ARchive. Also, sometimes, you might come across archives that expand from .zip to .cpgz, then back to .zip, in an endless loop.
In these cases, use Dag Ågren’s free The Unarchiver, a Swiss army knife for decompressing obscure archives. Not only will this program open many kinds of archives, but it can create in any of dozens of formats. You may never need most of these, but it’s good to know that if you get an archive in an obscure format, The Unarchiver can usually help.
Senior contributor Kirk McElhearn writes about more than just Macs on his blog Kirkville. Twitter: @mcelhearn Kirk is the author of Take Control of Scrivener 2.
Download RAR for Mac OSX Extract rarosx-x.x.x.tar.gz. With Secondary Click (Click or tap with 2 fingers) on rarosx-x.x.x.tar.gz file and open with Archive Utility. Copy the 4 files from that extracted, which are default.sfx, rar, rarfiles.lst, unrar. From menu Finder, Go - Go to Folder - “/usr/local/bin”. Download this app from Microsoft Store for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 10 Team (Surface Hub), HoloLens. See screenshots, read the latest customer reviews, and compare ratings for Zip - Unpack RAR, Unpack ZIP, Open RAR, Open ZIP, gzip. You can use cRARk to unlock RAR file on Mac. CRARk is a utility available for both Mac and Windows users. This command-line RAR password cracking tool is available for Linux as well. If your system comes with a powerful GPU, then you can easily work with CUDA as well. Jul 20, 2018 Select your RAR file and drag it onto The Unarchiver’s icon and your archived data is ready for use. Also, you can right click on the RAR files and from the “Open With” section choose The Unarchiver option. However, the simplest method is to double click on the RAR file, and The Unarchiver will extract the archive for you.
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Part of our digital day-to-day lives right now, whether personal or work-related, is the constant sharing of files. It could be a photo album from the latest trip or a collection of financial reports from the last quarter — our goal in all cases is to make sure the files arrive intact.
While it’s relatively easy to share one file over email or a cloud storage solution — sharing folders or multiple files at once is often a challenge. If you share too many files, they become hard to manage and some of them could get lost or overlooked. If you put them in a folder, it often arrives empty. Similarly, when you share an app (which is essentially a folder), most likely it won’t work on another Mac. So what do you do?
A great solution is to archive whatever you’re about to send before you send it. Archives keep the files and relationships between them exactly the same — with the added benefits of only having to deal with a single file that could also weigh less due to compression.
There are lots of formats for archiving files. Some of the most famous are RAR and ZIP. Let’s look at the differences between them, how to use them, and how to convert RAR to ZIP and back at any moment.
What’s The Difference Between RAR and ZIP?
Both RAR and ZIP are incredibly popular when it comes to creating archives. But they are also not the same and are used with slightly different goals in mind.
ZIP is one of the original archive formats created in 1989 by Phil Katz. It’s open-source and supported by all major operating systems right out of the box. ZIP also supports light compression and password-based encryption.
RAR, on the other hand, was developed by Eugene Roshal in 1993 (RAR stands for Roshal Archive). Even though the format is available to all, it’s not open source due to limitations set on reverse engineering. Unlike ZIP, you do need third-party software to open or create RAR formats, but you get the benefit of much better compression.
Historically, RAR has been predominantly used on Windows, while ZIP acceptance is universal. For this reason, a frequent question is how to turn a RAR file into a ZIP and what’s a good RAR to ZIP converter available for Mac.
How to convert RAR to ZIP on Mac
Doing a quick research online, you’ll come across dozens of websites claiming to convert RAR to ZIP archives for free. But it’s not always a good idea to trust a free website you don’t know. If the conversion works, it might not be of the best quality. More likely, however, that you might get some malware installed in your files or some of your files being copied elsewhere on the website’s server.
Apple Archive Utility Download
It’s much better to work with any kind of archives directly on your Mac. Even though you can archive and unarchive files with ZIP format using your Mac’s default Archive Utility (just right-click the file and choose Compress or double-click to uncompress), it doesn’t work like that with RAR files. You’d need to use some proven archival software.
BetterZip is one of the most powerful compression tools available on Mac today. With support for over 30 archival formats, this app quickly creates new archives and un-compresses pretty much any zipped file sent your way, including RAR.
The key feature of BetterZip is in how you can peek into the archive folders and files without even unarchiving them, just like you’d do with Finder. You can take files out of the archive or add new ones, rename things as you see fit, etc. You can even set strong passwords and automate repetitive workflows with AppleScript.
Unpack Rar For Mac
Here’s how to manage your RAR files with BetterZip:
- Launch BetterZip
- Drag and drop your RAR archive onto the app
- Feel free to drag files out of the archive one by one, or use Quick Look to peek into the files, or extract all files by clicking Extract in the top bar
The only thing you can’t do with BetterZip is actually create RAR archives. For that, you need a special archiving utility like Archiver. Ms powerpoint 2013.
Archiver is a lightweight Mac app that is so intuitive you often forget how powerful it really is. This utility can archive and unarchive dozens of formats, including RAR, and also convert one archival format into the other without unzipping the files first. In addition, you can preview files in any archive, extract anything selectively, split one archive into many to decrease file size or combine a few archives into a single one. Finally, set passwords and fine-tune the level of compression you’re looking for — all in one app!
So to convert RAR to ZIP with Archiver:
- Launch Archiver
- Drag and drop your RAR archive into the app
- Select Convert from the bottom menu
- Choose ZIP
- Rename your new archive, pick compression level, and set a password if you need to
- Click Convert when done
How to reduce RAR archive file size
The only major advantage of RAR as an archival format over ZIP is much better compression (up to 11% better), since ZIP is generally regarded as lossless.
But what do you do when your RAR archive is still too large for your purposes? Here, a regular lossless RAR to ZIP converter won’t help — you need an app that would include some level of compression.
Archiver comes to the rescue again:
- Open your RAR archive in Archiver
- Select Convert
- Choose ZIP, or even better 7ZIP (which has better compression)
- In the Compression Level dropdown, pick Highest
- Click Convert
If compressing your archive by conversion is not enough, your only other option is splitting it into a few equally sized archives. Luckily, Archiver can handle it in seconds:
Unpack Rar Mac Free
- Drop your RAR archive into Archiver
- Choose Split
- Set the “Chunk size” to a specific amount of KB, MB, or GB (select in the dropdown)
- Click Split
- Drag your resulting split archives to anywhere on your Mac
Unpack Rar On Mac
As you can see, there are more than a few ways for how to turn a RAR file into a ZIP. Sadly, there’s no easy way to do it on your Mac by default, and you should avoid all the free websites that claim to do so right away. Your best bet is to use BetterZip for professional unarchiver, and Archiver for all the archiving, converting and splitting.
Best of all, both BetterZip and Archiver are available to you absolutely free for seven days through the trial of Setapp, a platform with more than 210 top Mac apps for any task you can imagine, from surfing the web safely (ClearVPN) to managing your budget (MoneyWiz) to upgrading your calendar (BusyCal). Try every Setapp app at no cost today and see what you’ve been missing out on!