Support

Last updated: 17 September 2026

ZipUnzip Archiver opens RAR, 7-Zip, ZIP, TAR and a dozen other archive formats on your Mac, and creates ZIP, 7-Zip and TAR archives. This page covers the questions people ask most often. If yours is not answered here, email narender.nanu@gmail.com and you will get a reply from the person who built the app.

1. What you need

  • A Mac running macOS 14 or later
  • Apple silicon or Intel — the app is a universal binary and runs natively on both

2. Opening an archive

  1. Drag the archive onto the ZipUnzip Archiver window, or use File → Open Archive.
  2. The contents appear as a list of folders and files, with sizes.
  3. Click Extract All, or select the items you want and click Extract Selected.

You can also double-click an archive in Finder, if you have set ZipUnzip Archiver as the app that opens that file type.

3. Creating an archive

  1. Drag the files or folders onto the window, or use File → Compress Files.
  2. Choose the format, and the compression level if the format supports one.
  3. For a ZIP, switch on Protect with a password if you want it encrypted.
  4. Click Create.

4. The Finder right-click menu does not appear

macOS does not enable Finder extensions automatically. You have to switch it on once:

System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Extensions → Finder Extensions → tick ZipUnzip Archiver.

If it still does not show, log out and back in, or restart Finder. The main app's drag-and-drop works with no setup either way.

5. I cannot create a RAR file

This one deserves a straight answer rather than a list of things to try.

RAR compression is proprietary to its owner, and no third-party application may lawfully create a .rar file. That applies to every archive utility on the Mac, not only this one. Extracting RAR is unrestricted, which is why opening them works normally and creating them is absent from the format menu.

If you need to send someone an archive, ZIP is read by every operating system without extra software, and 7-Zip generally produces a smaller file.

6. It says my 7-Zip or RAR archive is encrypted and will not open it

The app can tell that the contents are encrypted, but it cannot decrypt encrypted 7-Zip or RAR archives — that support does not exist in the underlying archive library. Rather than ask you for a password and then fail, it says so up front.

Password-protected ZIP archives do open, including both the modern AES-256 scheme and the older one that some tools still produce. You can create encrypted ZIPs too.

7. Where did my extracted files go?

By default, into the same folder as the archive. If that folder cannot be written to, the app asks you where to put them instead.

You can change this in Settings: same folder as the original, your Downloads folder, or ask every time. After extracting, the banner at the bottom of the window has a Show in Finder button that takes you straight there.

8. An archive will not open, or opens with errors

Use Verify in the toolbar. It reads every file in the archive and checks it against the checksum stored inside, which reveals damage that simply listing the contents cannot detect.

  • If Verify reports damage, the archive was corrupted before it reached you — usually an interrupted download or a failing disk. Ask for a fresh copy. The app extracts whatever parts are still intact, but it cannot reconstruct data that is no longer in the file.
  • If Verify passes but a specific file still will not extract, email me the details below.

9. A multi-part archive (.part1.rar, .z01, .7z.001)

Make sure every part is present in the same folder before opening the first one. A split archive with a missing part cannot be extracted by any tool, because the data genuinely is not there.

10. Does it send my files anywhere?

No, and it could not. The app has no network permission at all, so it has no ability to connect to anything. Everything happens on your Mac. There is no account, no analytics and no advertising.

11. Removing the app

Delete it from your Applications folder. The only thing it stored was your choice of where to save extracted files, which goes with it.

12. Contact

Email narender.nanu@gmail.com. To get a useful answer quickly, please include:

  • Your macOS version, and whether your Mac is Apple silicon or Intel
  • The archive format, and which tool created it if you know
  • What you clicked and what happened instead, including the exact wording of any message
  • Whether Verify reports the archive as intact or damaged

ZipUnzip Archiver is an independent application. RAR is a trademark of Alexander Roshal. 7-Zip is the work of Igor Pavlov. All other product names are the property of their respective owners and are named only to describe the file formats the App reads.

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