Winrar-like archive utility for OS X

Question

I've been a Mac user for about 1.5 years and so far enjoyed the experience. But one thing I miss from other operating systems is the lack of compression/decompression utilities that follow the "folder" analogy.

The things I was able to find only decompressed entire archives to a destination directory without even giving me the chance to see what's contained in the archive. I guess I am more used to something like winrar or the gnome archive utility so when I double click an archive file, I wan't to be able to see what's contained in it and be able to extract individual files.

Is there any hope (without resorting to command line), or maybe I should code one myself :)

Solution 1

Maybe the BetterZip Quick Look Generator would work. It doesn't make it transparent like a folder, but it's fairly fast at displaying the contents of the archive.

Solution 2

try Zipeg

very nice app for inspecting/unarchiving archives - and it's free.

Solution 3

iArchiver provides a file-explorer type interface for archives. However, it does this when you drag the archive on to the "Extract" box in the program; just double-clicking archives in Finder will still auto-extract them.

Comments

[Mark Thalman]

I get annoyed on Windows because when I double click a zip file I expect it to extract everything into my current folder. Double clicking shows me the contents like a folder which is useless because I can't use the files without extracting them from the archive. Instead I have to right click to extract and then it puts up three dialog boxes that I never change to do this.

[phoebus]

AFAIK RAR is just a command-line tool; the poster is looking for a graphical explorer.

[maxxyme]

OP asked for a "Winrar-like archive utility", that would let him preview the contents of the archive BEFORE uncompressing it!!!

[maxxyme]

Zipeg development halted in July 2012... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipeg

[maxxyme]

Unarchiver just takes an archive and uncompress it. You can't view the contents before that...

[cregox]

fair enough @maxxyme but i think i did acknowledge that in the answer. in any case, this is 11 years old, and i don't use mac for at least 4. i still recommend trying 7-zip. cheers!

[maxxyme]

I like 7-zip too (using it on Windows for years - can't remember when I started by the way) ... but I'm still looking for something similar on Mac...