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Published: 22nd of March, 2024
The RAR file format, developed by Eugene Roshal in 1993, is a proprietary archive file format offering high compression ratios and strong support for various features not found in many other data compression formats. Like the 7z format, RAR is known for its ability to efficiently compress files, which can lead to significant reductions in file size. RAR also supports features such as file spanning, solid archiving, and encryption, making it a powerful choice for users needing to securely archive and share large volumes of data.
Despite its proprietary nature, RAR remains a popular choice for file compression and archiving, supported by a range of software applications across different operating systems. However, unlike the 7z format, which is open-source, RAR's proprietary status means that full support for creating RAR archives is typically found in software directly licensed by the format's owner. For Mac users, unarchiving RAR files can be easily accomplished with iZip.
To expand RAR files on your Mac using iZip, follow these steps:
It's worth mentioning that you can also extract files by dragging them out of the iZip window and dropping them into a folder on your Mac. This can be a convenient way to extract only the files you need without extracting the entire archive, which can be a hassle as extracting the whole contents may take a long time and clutters up your hard drive.
According to the iZip website, the application is designed with privacy in mind and contains no analytics or third-party tracking code. This means that your usage of iZip is not being tracked or monitored by any external parties.
In contrast, some other macOS unarchivers like WinZip and The Unarchiver have been known to include tracking code in their applications, and this has been reported by some users and media outlets in the past. While the developers of have stated that this code is only used to collect anonymous usage statistics, some users may prefer to use a tool that does not contain any tracking code.
While there are a few alternatives available for extracting RAR files on Mac, its respect of user privacy, comprehensive archive format support including the latest RAR versions, and advanced features make iZip clearly the best app for the job!
For reference I'm also including links to both WinZip and The Unarchiver from our vast macOS application library.
See you next time,