Opening a ZIP on a Mac is easy; opening a 7z, a RAR, an archive inside an archive, or one you don’t trust takes a dedicated tool. Two good ones are MacPacker, free and open source, and BetterZip, a long-running paid app. Oxid Inspect’s archive features are free too, and built around a different question: what is in this file, and is it safe to extract? This page compares the three.
MacPacker: free, open source, many formats
MacPacker is a “free and open source archive manager for macOS” that “opens 40+ archive, disk image, and compression formats”, recognised “by their magic number” (README).
- Formats: archives including 7z, rar, zip, zipx, tar, xar, cab, msi, lha, sit and more; disk images including dmg, iso, qcow2, vmdk, vhdx, squashfs and ntfs; and the common compressors (README).
- Nested archives: “Drill in seamlessly, with no intermediate extractions.” Previews use the system previewer, and there is a Quick Look extension.
- Editing: it can “modify and re-save ZIP archives in place”; creating archives is still on its roadmap.
- Price and licence: free, GNU GPL v3. On the Mac App Store and GitHub; version 1.0.0 was released on 1 October 2026 (releases). Needs macOS 14.6 or later.
BetterZip 6: create, encrypt, preview
BetterZip opens and extracts “over 30 formats” and creates archives in “ZIP, DMG, TAR, TGZ, TBZ, TXZ, TZ, Zstandard, Brotli, 7-Zip, XAR, ISO, and – through the external command-line utility – RAR”, with AES-256 encryption and a Quick Look extension that previews archive contents in Finder (BetterZip).
- Price: $35 once, with free minor updates and paid major upgrades; a personal licence covers up to five Macs in a household, a commercial one is per Mac; also on Setapp (buy).
- Current version: 6.0.6, 16 September 2026, for macOS 13.5 or later (version history).
Oxid Inspect: look first, extract safely
Oxid Inspect treats an archive as something to understand before it touches your disk. Its archive features are free for ever:
- Formats: ZIP (including encrypted ZIP), 7z, RAR, tar, XAR, cpio, ar and Debian packages, and the gzip, bzip2, xz, LZMA, Zstandard, LZ4, Brotli, lzip and .Z compressors, with archives inside archives browsed like folders.
- Safe extraction: names that would escape the destination folder are refused, links stay inside it, files are written whole or not at all, and a download’s quarantine carries over to every extracted file, as Archive Utility does.
- Findings, not just a list: duplicate names, names that collide after Unicode normalisation, path tricks, compression bombs and weak ZIP encryption are flagged with what they mean.
- Every file type, by its contents: 300+ types recognised with the reason shown, so a “photo.jpg” that is really an app says so.
- Hashes against a published one, Space-bar previews in Finder, and Extract Here in the context menu.
What it does not do, honestly: it cannot create, edit or encrypt archives yet, so for making archives BetterZip (or Finder’s Compress for ZIP) is the tool. MacPacker opens more formats, including CAB, MSI, LHA, StuffIt and virtual-machine disks, which Inspect does not. And Inspect parses every file in a separate, sandboxed helper process, which costs a little speed in exchange for keeping a malformed archive away from the rest of your Mac.
With Pro ($29 once), the same app also reads Mac apps, installer packages and disk images in depth, compares versions and audits folders; see Oxid Inspect vs Apparency and Suspicious Package.
At a glance
| Oxid Inspect (free) | MacPacker | BetterZip 6 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (Pro $29 once) | Free, open source | $35 once (or Setapp) |
| Opens | ZIP, 7z, RAR, tar, XAR, cpio, ar, common compressors | 40+ formats incl. disk images | Over 30 formats |
| Nested archives | Yes | Yes | Not listed |
| Safe-extraction checks (path escapes, links, bombs) | Yes, with findings | Not listed | Not listed |
| Creates archives | No | No (edits ZIP in place) | Yes, many formats; RAR via an external tool |
| Encryption when creating | No | No | AES-256 |
| Quick Look | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | 14 or later | 14.6 or later | 13.5 or later |
Questions
Is there a free BetterZip alternative for Mac?
MacPacker is free and open source (GNU GPL v3), and Oxid Inspect's archive features are free. Neither creates archives, though MacPacker can edit and re-save ZIP archives in place, so for making archives BetterZip, or Finder's Compress for ZIP, is the tool.
How much does BetterZip cost?
BetterZip is $35 once, with free minor updates and paid major upgrades. A personal licence covers up to five Macs in a household and a commercial one is per Mac; it is also on Setapp.
What is MacPacker?
MacPacker is a free, open-source archive manager for macOS that opens 40+ archive, disk image and compression formats and lets you drill into nested archives without intermediate extractions. It is on the Mac App Store and GitHub and needs macOS 14.6 or later.
How do I open a RAR file on a Mac?
MacPacker and Oxid Inspect both open RAR archives, and both are free. BetterZip can also create RAR archives, through an external command-line utility.
Can Oxid Inspect create or encrypt archives?
Not yet. Oxid Inspect cannot create, edit or encrypt archives; BetterZip creates them in many formats with AES-256 encryption. MacPacker also opens more formats than Inspect, including CAB, MSI, LHA, StuffIt and virtual-machine disks.