any decent file archiver?

As the subject

On the PC i used Winrar, which is a great achiver, the one built into Mac Os is pretty naff, worse than the one built into Windows. Winrar on the Mac has no GUI, and it has been many years since I use a command line to use an archiver, since the Amiga days.

Which is the best container to use these days as well? I like Rar, but I presume there are better ones these days.

Thanks peeps

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

On the PC i used Winrar, which is a great achiver, the one built into Mac Os is pretty naff, worse than the one built into Windows. Winrar on the Mac has no GUI, and it has been many years since I use a command line to use an archiver, since the Amiga days.

I too used Winrar back when my main OS was Windows.

I'd disagree that the built in Mac one is naff, it compresses and uncompresses, much like the Windows one. And it has the benefit that it doesn't do the strange extract and then move that Windows does (which can sometimes be massively slow with a zip file with many thousands of files in it).

But it is basic and takes the approach of just extracting the whole file every time (you can't extract just selected files). But I'd argue that they've picked the best behaviour for most users encountering an archive.

For more advanced functionality I use BetterZip https://macitbetter.com

It can handle just about any archive format you might want.

It has nice features like support for Finder's preview stuff. So if you have an archive selected in Finder, tapping the spacebar will show you what it in the archive without having to extract anything or even open the app.

It is a lot more fully featured than Winrar, it costs $25

Cheers, i will have a look at it.

The archivers that are built into Windows and Mac OS is too basic, they are fine if all you want is to zip and unzip, but no good for anything else, like putting a password on the archive. I miss winrar, it is a same they don't make a version for Mac with the GUI, they could call it Macrar or something like that

I don't use an archiver so have no idea what this one is like, but it's free and says it supports passwords and file splitting- Keka

Maybe worth a look.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I miss winrar, it is a same they don't make a version for Mac with the GUI, they could call it Macrar or something like that

7Zip on Windows is the king now, completely free, and supports almost every format you can give it. On Mac they only have a command line tool sadly. (WinRar? Is it the 1990s... )

https://www.7-zip.org/

Edited by jchamier (Tue 18-Jul-23 12:43:33)

Some of us remember CompactPro...

In reply to a post by ian_c:

Some of us remember CompactPro...

Those whom didn't use StuffIt... that was the days I was busy learning VAX...