The Archive Browser

The Archive Browser is a file archive manager for the Mac. It is based on The Unarchiver, my favorite archive decompression (or extraction) tool on the Mac.

The Unarchiver is an absolute time saver for me, but it behaves differently than The Archive Browser. The former automatically unpacks an archive and puts the file in the same directory, while the latter lets you see what is inside an archive first. If you are a Windows user switching to Mac, I would say that The Archive Browser behaves a lot like WinRAR or WinZIP. When you open an archive with it, a new window will pop up and you will see every file compressed within the archive. Then you can decide what to do with those files. You can extract them anywhere on your Mac, or extract them on the same folder as the archive. You can also extract one file or all of them at the same time. There is support for Quick Look, which lets you preview the files inside an archive. I tested this feature with one of those multi-part RAR files with a video file inside. The app first unpacked the file to let me preview the video, which actually defines the purpose of the preview function. I have seen other applications process the preview feature faster than The Archive Browser, too. For example, XBMC lets me open video files inside RAR files, and the process is almost instantaneous.

In short, The Archive Browser is a nice application. It has its flaws, but it will surely appeal to users who miss the way archives are dealt with on Windows.