Any good the unarchiver alternative on mac for opening .rar files

New to mac and has to open .rar files shared by others on mac occasionally. I was told to use the free unarchiver app. However, there are a couple of issues with this app.


First, the CleanMyMac ads pops up from time to time and the parent company MacPaw has a bad record or aggressive ads campaign.


Second, it produces error "contents of the folder (.rar) can not be extracted using the unarchiver." The RAR file is working fine on Windows machine.


Now, I am looking for a good unarchiver alternative on Mac.

MacBook Pro (2021)

Posted on Apr 2, 2025 8:31 PM

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Apr 2, 2025 11:31 PM in response to ceinsgra

If you're looking for the good unarchiver alternative on Mac to open .rar files, here are a few options you can consider:


  1. Keka: Keka is a free and open-source unarchiver alternative on Mac. It supports a wide range of formats, including .rar. Keka has a simple interface and does not display intrusive ads. You can download it from Keka's website.
  2. RAR Extractor Free: This is a specific tool for extracting .rar files. While it’s free, be aware that some features might be limited in the free version. It's available for download on the Mac App Store.
  3. Archive Utility: macOS comes with a built-in Archive Utility that can extract certain types of files. While it may have limitations with .rar files, you can try renaming the file from .rar to .zip and see if it can extract it (not guaranteed).
  4. Terminal Commands: If you're comfortable with the command line, you can use homebrew (a package manager for macOS) to install unrar. Open Terminal and run:

brew install unar

After that, you can open .rar files using the command:

unrar x yourfile.rar

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Apr 2, 2025 11:43 PM in response to ceinsgra

If you're hunting for a solid free unarchiver alternative for your Mac, I'd definitely recommend giving the Unarchiver a shot.


This app is super simple to use and doesn't come with any of those annoying ads or paywalls. You just drag and drop your compressed files – like ZIPs, RARs, and even some obscure formats – and bam, it does the job without breaking a sweat. I’ve used it myself, and it’s pretty reliable.


The interface is nice and clean, which is a major plus if you’re like me and get irritated by complicated other unarchiver alternative on Mac. Plus, it integrates right into Finder, so you can just right-click and extract, which makes life way easier. It can handle larger files and multi-part archives gracefully, which I've had good experiences with.


Overall, if you want something that's effective and doesn’t complicate your life, The Unarchiver is definitely worth checking out. Just download it from the App Store or their website, and you’re good to go!

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Apr 3, 2025 3:07 AM in response to ceinsgra

I would like to recommend 7-Zip to you, one of the best unarchiver alternative on mac. It is a famous open source compression tool, although mainly designed for Windows, but its command line version p7zip can be used on Mac, completely free but the operation will be more complicated I will give you a simple tutorial to use!


1. Input the command to unzip a rar file on mac:


7z x filename


The file will be extracted to the current directory.


2. Decompress with password:


7z x filename -p password


If you don't like the command line tools, then there are many free alternatives to unarchiver on Mac App Store.


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Apr 4, 2025 11:01 AM in response to VikingOSX

VikingOSX wrote:

The owner of The Unarchiver is MacPaw Way Ltd. Hence, the CleanMyMac nonsense.

Well, I did not know that. Seems like this occurred around 2017.


I guess I will never use or recommend The Unarchiver anymore. What a shame.


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Any good the unarchiver alternative on mac for opening .rar files

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