Personal productivityOriginal Reddit post

Zip & Rar files handling

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Coming from Windows, Winrar and 7z are the best in the platform but when i got a Macbook, i still suffer from extraction or compressing files. I tried keka and peazip but still not get that snappy and easy way of doing this simple task. Can you recommend me any other app beside these or tell me how to get the best of them in case i am using them wrong ? thank you

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u/fololologrtOPReply

What is the difference between betterzip and maczip

u/fololologrtOPReply

how did i not heard about this one ? also what is the difference between pro and the free

u/fololologrtOPReply

So this one i think is the minimal version of Maczip, also what is the difference between it and Maczip ?

u/Ray-chan81194Reply

this is absolutely what I need just to see the contents inside and pick what to extract, thanks.

u/arrowrand

I use Keka. It’s totally free (donation would be nice) from the developers website or for sale in the Mac App Store. Also available on iOS/iPad OS

u/peazleyReply

Another vote for Keka. It's simple, clean and does exactly what I need it for.

u/fololologrtOPReply

If you have like a good idea how to make it work better, lemme know.

u/arrowrandReply

I don’t know what you mean by “snappy” or “work better”. I’m not a compressed files enthusiast by any stretch, but to me, there’s no lag when I create or open with Keka. You can extract zip, 7z and rar (and others) with the built in MacOS archive utility. But again, I have no idea what “snappy” means to you. I download a compressed file and it’s extracted in my downloads folder as soon as the download completes. To me, that works and is snappy enough.

u/serii_gg

For opening rar, The Unarchiver from the App Store. Free, set it as default for .rar and .7z and you basically forget about it. For creating archives Keka works, you just have to set the default per format. Right-click any archive, Get Info, Open With, Change All. Once that's done it's invisible. If you live in Terminal anyway, brew install p7zip rar gives you the actual 7z and rar CLIs. Faster for batch stuff, scriptable, no GUI in your face.

u/Downtown-Art2865

keka + setting it as default for all archive formats + finder toolbar shortcut is basically as close as you'll get to the winrar feel. won't ever match the right-click integration but the drag-on-icon flow gets quick once it's habit.

u/chromatophoreskin

https://macpacker.app integrates with finder, allowing you to work with compressed archives without first extracting them.

u/pastry-chef

If you need to compress in RAR, I feel BetterZip is the best.

u/RicoSaas

keka is the best but make sure you set it as default handler, right click any zip > get info > open with > keka > change all. after that double clicking extracts instantly without finder's archive utility jumping in. once setup properly its as fast as 7zip on windows

u/FrappeLaRue

BetterZip, nice and slick, lots of options. Also just found some old weird thing called ExpressZip...ugly as hell, but can create PAR2 files. I like Keka.

u/fololologrtOPReply

What is the difference between betterzip and maczip