The Unarchiver
Registers itself for every archive type macOS cannot open and extracts them on double-click.
Homebrew cask Mac App Store Direct download
What it does
The Unarchiver handles RAR (including multi-part), 7z, StuffIt, LZH, ARJ, ACE, ISO, BIN, split archives and dozens of legacy formats, and it gets filename encoding right — the reason non-Latin filenames from old Windows archives come out readable instead of as mojibake.
It has no real interface. Set which extensions it claims once, and from then on double-clicking works.
Notes
Extraction only; it does not create archives. For that, Finder’s own Compress produces ZIP, and p7zip or PeaZip cover the rest.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Keka | Open source | Also free, and it creates archives as well as extracting them |
| BetterZip | Paid | Archive previewing and editing |
| Archive Utility | Built in | Built into macOS; handles ZIP and tarballs and little else |
| PeaZip | Open source | Heavier, but covers encryption and 200-plus formats |
Install
brew install --cask the-unarchiver