How can i decompress rar files on mac

Having a RAR extractor for Mac saves you tons of time when dealing with archives. For earlier versions click here. The Unarchiver Open any archive in seconds. Takes a few clicks to install and set it as a default app for all archive files. Supported archive formats With The Unarchiver you can extract files from the following archive formats Popular formats. Full Zip Full support for the normal zip format, with additional support for AES encryption, Zip64 extensions for large files, Mac OS extensions of many different kinds, and several unusual compression methods.

Full Zipx Full support for the new compression modes introduced by WinZip. Full RAR Including encryption and multiple volumes. Full 7z All common compression methods are supported.

Also supports Unix extensions. Some EXE Many kinds of. Basic Split files Can join files named. But brew install rar provides an unrar tool. Show 2 more comments. Telemachus Telemachus 6, 1 1 gold badge 24 24 silver badges 31 31 bronze badges. Nothing built-in if I'm not mistaken no access to a Mac now. Snark Snark Josh K Josh K It just said "contents could not be extracted with this program. The Unarchiver is set as my default, so much better then the built in BOM.

Benjamin Schollnick Benjamin Schollnick 4, 15 15 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. Dan Rosenstark Dan Rosenstark 6, 12 12 gold badges 56 56 silver badges 93 93 bronze badges.

Pathfinder is overkill if you are just extracting RAR files. Booting it up takes a while too. It's great for integration at the expense of Finder. Josh K, this was true in , but now SSDs and bootup are much faster, at least. Pathfinder is still—in my opinion—overkill on a system. That's true Josh K, it's a hassle to start up, but I don't think the memory or processing footprint is significant. But this is an empirical question: what do you want to compare it to? Nothing really to compare it to.

They took Finder and added a bunch more stuff to click on. It's usually found in the Dock at the bottom of your Mac's screen. Click The Unarchiver application. This will launch the Unarchiver program. If prompted, you may have to select whether you want to save unarchived files to the same folder each time, or if you want to be asked each time. Click the Archive Formats tab. It's at the top of the window. Check the "RAR Archive" box.

Doing so ensures that the Unarchiver program will be able to open RAR files in the future. Select a RAR file. If you are trying to extract a multi-part RAR file, start with the ". All the parts should be in the same folder. It's at the top of your Mac's screen. A drop-down menu will appear. In some cases, you may also be able to double-click the RAR file to open it in Unarchiver.

This may not work if you have multiple apps which can open RAR files on your Mac. Select Open With. This option is in the File drop-down menu. A pop-out will appear. It's in the pop-out menu. If the RAR file is password-protected, you'll be prompted to enter the password before the files can be extracted.

Open the extracted file s. For example, if the RAR file was in the Desktop folder, you'll find the extracted files there. Method 2. Open the StuffIt Expander website. Download StuffIt Expander. Install StuffIt Expander. Double-click the downloaded DMG file, click Agree when prompted, and wait for it to install. You may be prompted to verify the software before you can install it. In this quick overview, you'll learn everything you need to know about what RAR files are, why they exist, and how to open and extract RAR file contents on a Mac.

If you already know this, or if you just don't care, feel free to skip down to the next section for the actual instructions. Both are "archive" file formats meant for compressing many individual files into one single file.

That way, you only have to put one file up for download or attach one file to an email , and receivers only need to download one file instead of many separate ones.

The RAR format was created to address some of the flaws in the ZIP format and comes with several benefits: smaller file sizes, the ability to split a RAR into multiple chunks, and error recovery.

That said, we've come a long way since the days of ZIP and RAR, and we now have better ways to compress, encrypt, and transfer files. The 7-Zip format is one popular option, but it's far from the standard. As such, it's still important to know how to handle RAR files. The RAR format is proprietary, so it's no surprise that Mac systems don't come with a built-in utility for handling it. However, the solution is as easy as installing a free third-party tool that can open RAR files.

Keka is a compression and extraction tool that's available both in the Mac App Store and as a standalone installation. Once installed, all you have to do is double-click on a RAR file to extract it, or right-click one and select Open.