RAR / UnRAR
The only tools that create RAR archives, plus the reference extractor.
What it does
Installs rar and unrar from RARLAB. unrar extracts anything, including recovery records and multi-part sets; rar creates archives, which no open-source implementation can do — the compression format is proprietary and only decompression has been reverse-engineered.
unrar x archive.rar
unrar l archive.rar
rar a -m5 -v100m archive.rar folder/ # max compression, 100 MB volumesNotes
RAR is shareware: unrar is free to use, rar is licensed after a trial period. In practice there is little reason to create RAR archives today — 7z compresses comparably and is unencumbered. Keep this for reading what other people send.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| 7z | Open source | Comparable ratios, an open format, and no licence to think about |
| Keka or The Unarchiver | Open source / Free | Extract RAR without installing RARLAB’s tools |
| Nothing else writes RAR | — | The format is proprietary; only RARLAB’s rar can create the archives |
Install
brew install --cask rar