The Unarchiver
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Original author(s) | Dag Ågren |
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Developer(s) | Circlesoft, MacPaw[1] |
Stable release | 4.3.8[2] ![]() |
Repository | |
Operating system | macOS, Linux using GNUstep libraries, and command line only on Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS |
Available in | 18 languages |
List of languages English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Turkish | |
Type | File Extractor / Decompressor |
License | Proprietary since acquisition[3] Formerly LGPLv2.1-or-later |
Website | theunarchiver |
The Unarchiver is an ad-supported[3] data decompression utility, which supports more formats than Archive Utility[4] (formerly known as BOMArchiveHelper), the built-in archive unpacker program in macOS. It can also handle filenames in various character encodings, created using operating system versions that use those character encodings.[5] The latest version requires Mac OS X Lion or higher. The Unarchiver does not compress files.[6]
Prior to the purchase by MacPaw in 2017,[7] The Unarchiver was free software licensed under the LGPL, up to version 3.11.1 (released 2016).[8] This version, and the versions prior to the buyout, are still available for download from Dag Ågren’s original website.[9] The Unarchiver version 3.11.1 provided a free-software implementation of extraction of RAR versions up to RAR5.[10][11]
The corresponding command line utilities unar
and lsar
are free software licensed under the LGPL[12][13] run on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS.[14]
A key feature of The Unarchiver is its ability to handle many old or obscure archive formats, including StuffIt, AmigaOS disk images, and LZH/LZX archives. The source code credits libxad, an Amiga file format library. Ågren also reverse engineered the StuffIt and StuffIt X formats. His work resulted in one of the most complete open source implementations of these proprietary formats.
References
[edit]- ^ "MacPaw acquires The Unarchiver Mac app, will keep it updated & free". 9to5Mac. 27 July 2017.
- ^ "The Unarchiver | Top Free Unarchiving Software for macOS". Archived from the original on 29 July 2024. Retrieved 3 August 2024.
- ^ a b "End User License Agreement (EULA) for MacPaw Products. Disclaimer and Limitations". MacPaw.com. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
- ^ Popescu, George (19 August 2013). "The Unarchiver – A Better Way to Decompress Archives". Softpedia. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
- ^ Seff, Jon. "Mac Gems: The Unarchiver is a free, robust file-extraction utility". Macworld. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
- ^ Fenton, William. "The Unarchiver (for Mac)". PC Magazine. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
- ^ "MacPaw acquires The Unarchiver and commits to making it even better". MacPaw. 2017-07-27. Retrieved 2024-02-18.
- ^ "The Unarchiver source code from 2016 is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1". 2011-05-12.
- ^ "The Unarchiver".
- ^ "Another High Priority Project done: The Unarchiver provides free RARv3 extraction tools". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved 2024-02-18.
- ^ "The Unarchiver changes". The Unarchiver. Archived from the original on 2017-07-06.
- ^ "Unar and Lsar - Command Line Tools for The Unarchiver". The Unarchiver. Retrieved 2024-02-18., including The Unarchiver source code from 2016.
- ^ "MacPaw/XADMaster is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1". GitHub. 2018-03-21. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
- ^ "Command line tools". The Unarchiver. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
External links
[edit]- The Unarchiver's Website
- unar, lsar source code repository
- Pre-buyout free software releases (source code and binaries)
- Code repository for the free software version